Baron-Cohen: Autism Flashcards
Autism
What kind of diorder is it?
Traits?
Developmental disorder
Traits: may prefer to be alone, aviod eye contact, inflexible routines and become distressed when it is broken
Triad of Impairment in Autism (3)
Social communication- struggle to read facial expressions and understand jokes
Social interactions- May behave in a way deemed inappriate such as standing too close
Social imagination- struggle to predict
Theory of mind
Ability to? infer (2) recognise(3)
What does Baron-Cohen argue about this?
The ability to infer what other people are thinking or feeling and recognise that other people have different knowledge, thoughts and emotions to our own
Argues that people wth austim find difficulty with the theory of mind
Test Name? Measure? Age when children would pass the test? Autism?
Sally-Anne doll test
One of the first tests to measure theory of mind
Most children would pass this test by age 5-6
But it is said that children with autism have more difficulty with it
Test
Name?
Why was it needed?
Example?
Happes Stange Stories
More age appropiate
Eg Peter loves his aunt vey much- she is wearing a new hat which Peter does not like as he prefers her old hat but when he is asked if he likes her hat hey says yes
Is it true what Peter said?
Why did Peter say he liked the hat?
Eyes task How many photographs? second interval? options? wwhat did participants have to do? Example?
Participants shown 25 photographs of different pairs of eyes in 3 second intervals and had to choose between two words in which they felt best defined the mental state shown eg playful or serious
Hypothesis
Who will impaired? on what kind of test? compared to which two groups? name? despte?
What gender will perform better on the eyes task? which condition?
Adults with autism or Aspergers Syndrome will be impaired compared to controls (‘normal’ adults and adults with tourettes syndrome) on a theory of mind test- the eyes task (despite being of normal IQ)
In comparison, females will perform better on the eyes task than males (normal population
Sample
Level of autism?
Charcateristic of normal adults?
Third group?
Adults with high functioning autism or aspergers syndrome compared against normal adults (no developmental disorder) and adults with tourettes syndrome
Independent variable- conditions?
Dependant variable- performance on?
IV = condition of participant eg autism, tourettes or no delopmental disorder
DV = performance on Eyes task (number of emotions correctly recognised
Why were adults why tourettes syndrome included? When do both conditions become apparent? what do they both disrupt? Which gender is most affected? What does this allow?
Number of similarities with autism and AS- on-set childhood disorders which disrupt normal peer relations and affect males more than females
Allows comparison to see if having any disorder imoacts performance on eyes task or whether performance is specific to having autism or AS
Procedure
How were participants test? where were the different places they were tested?
How many tasks did they complete
what were the cotrol tasks?
Each participant was tested individually at their home, the clinic or at the university
Complted 4 tasks
- eyes task
- strange stories task
- Two control tasks: gender recognition and basic emotion recognition
Strange stories task how many different stories were there? what did they include? (5) how many examples were participants shown? what did participants have to do? how were answers scored?
Presented with 2 exampes of each of the 12 different stories including: lie, white lie, joke, figure of speech and irony
After hearing the stories participants had to explain why the characters said what they did
Answers were scored as correct, incorrect and invloving either mental states or physical factors
Gender recognition task
What were participants shown?
What did they have to do?
what kind of task was this
Participants were shown the same 25 sets of eyes from the eyes task
They had to state whether the person in the picure was male or female
-Control task
Basic emotion recognition
what were particpans shown?
What did pictures display? examples of emotions shown?
type of ask?
Partcipants shown black and white photographs of entirs faces
Each of 6 faces dispalayed a different basic emotion eg happy, sad, angry or afraid
Control task
Eyes task results
