Baron-Cohen Flashcards
What award did Baron-Cohen get
• He was awarded the Kanner-Asperger Medal in 2013
was also director of autism research at cambridge
What did Leo Kanner find
In 11 children, inability to relate themselves to ordinary people.
Kanner-syndrome
what is kanner syndrome?
infantile autism (< 3yrs), usually low-functioning with impaired intelligence
What did Hans Asperger find
with 4 children, the fundamental disorder of autistic individuals is the limitation of their social relationships
what is aspergers?
“milder” form of autism, usually high-functioning
what is the triad of impairments (wind and Gould)
communication, social interaction, imagination
What is needed to be classed with ASD in DSM-V
A) persistent defects in social communciation and interaction
B) restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities
What was Bettleheim’s early environmental theory of autism
refrigerator mother
why was Asperger & Kanners bio origin theory weak,
didnt have the methods to explore it
Info about cognitive theories
- Scarce before the 1980s
* Focussed on perception, memory and language
What is theory of mind
The ability to attribute mental states to others which allows us to think about why people do the things that they do. It helps us to predict behaviour
Who investigated chimpanzees and mental states
Premack and Woodruff
Who said It is not enough to be able to predict the actions of another; actions can often be predicted based on the state of the world
dennet
Why must a test of ToM include a prediction of a false belief
‘John knows the chocolate is in the drawer and observes Mary searching for it. John thinks: ‘Mary will look for the chocolate in the drawer.’
Mary may indeed look in the drawer as that is were the chocolate really is
‘
^^thats just common sense
Whose model of false belief task did Baron-Cohen adapt?
Wimmer & Perner (1983)
How many participants
N = 20 autistic children (6-16 yrs old) N = 14 children with Down’s syndrome (6-17 yrs old) N = 27 typically developing children (3 – 6 yrs old)
What was the procedure?
- Sally-Anne task: Where will Sally look for the marble?
- Reality question: Where is the marble really?
- Memory question: Where was the marble in the beginning?
what were the results
correct response given was 20% autistic, 86% downs, 85% control
what was the conclusion
• Selective impairment in ToM
• Independent of general intelligence
• Children with ASD do not understand that their belief and Sally’s belief will be different
Inability to represent mental states in others
One of the first cognitive accounts of ASD
What are other explanations alongside ToM
- executive dysfunction
- weak control coherence
What is executive dysfunction (Ozzonoff et al, 1991)
• Difficulty in planning goals; tendency to become fixated on one
what is Weak Central Coherence (Frith & Happe, 1995)
- Difficulty in combining several pieces of information into a whole
- Weak central coherence in autism
Which ToM deficits are not specific to autism?
- Schizophrenia (Sprong et al., 2007)
- Depression (Inoue et al., 2004)
- Conduct disorders (Happe & Frith, 1996)
- Right hemisphere damage (Surian & Siegal, 2001)
Who said “It is time to give up on a single explanation for autism”
Happe, Ronald & Plomin, 2006
Why do we need a secondary order false belief test
Not all people with ASD fail the Sally Anne test
What is the second false order belief task
John and Mary both know that the ice cream van has moved.
But they don’t know that the other person also knows this.
Where does John think Mary will go for the ice cream?
did any autistic children pass the second order false belief test
no but some adults did
What is the minimum neurotypical verbal age to pass FBTs (Happe)
3.62 years
what is the minimum ASD verbal mental age to pass FBTs (Happe)
5.5 years
What did Onishi and Baillargeon find?
• Infants look more at the event they did not expect to occur
What is the problem of interpretation bias in FBTs
• Typically developing children pass
–>Interpretation: They have ToM
• ASD children/adults pass
–>Interpretation: They use compensatory mechanisms; we need to devise a better test
• Some ASD individuals pass 1st order FBTs…
• Some ASD individuals pass 2nd order FBTs…
What is the social orientation hypothesis
an social cognition deficits be explained by lack of social orientation
What did Senju, Southgat, White and Frith (2009) find
• High functioning adults with autism who fail standard FBTs
• Condition 1: Spontaneous attribution of mental state
• Condition 2: Verbal instructions
-> Drastically improved performance with social instructions
-> Performance in social tasks may not be determined by what participants are able to do but what they are inclined to do
Performance on tasks can be affected by
- explicitness
- relevance
- intrinsic interest
What is the empathising-systemising theory
- Newer theory to account for non-social features (Baron-Cohen, 2009)
- Two dimensions Empathising and Systemising
- In (E-S) theory ASD best explained using both dimensions in combination
• So the discrepancy between E and S determines whether you are likely to develop an autism spectrum condition or not.
How many times has this paper been cited
9085
