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
