Baron-Cohen: Autism Eyes Test Flashcards
Define psychometrics
“Measurement of the mind” or “science of psychological assessment (measuring intelligence and personality through questionnaires and tests)
What are the strengths and weaknesses of psychometrics?
Strengths: standardization allows for higher objectivity, reliability, and wider generalization.
Weaknesses: may lack validity because not everyone is familiar with the test, people make assumptions based on results, labels are difficult to remove, and people CHANGE.
Define IQ
Intelligence quotient
-Measures intelligence based on cognitive functions (such as problem solving, memorization, reading comprehension)
(Majority of scores from 50-150)
Define AQ
Autism quotient
-Measures the degree to which any individual of normal IQ possesses traits related to the autistic “spectrum”
(Self-report questionnaire scores range from 0-50)
What are the characteristics of autism?
- Developmental disorder
- Starts in childhood
- Incurable
- ASD means there are different levels of autism based on the individual
- social disorder
- Asperger’s is considered a form of ASD
What is ToM?
Theory of mind
-Shorthand for “the ability to attribute mental states to oneself or another person”
Stage 1: attribution of relevant mental state
Stage 2: inferring of content of that mental state
(Flawed study concluded that AS/HFA could do stage 1 but not stage 2)
What is the Eyes Test?
(1997)
Used actors’ eyes to see if AS/HFA people could determine mental state using minimal physical cues
What were the issues with the original study?
- Ceiling effect
- Easy items
- Gaze-perception
- Female/male ratio
- Target-foil opposites
- Unknown language
What is the Ceiling Effect? How did they control for it in the revised study?
Issue: combination of word choice and narrow range issue meant too many people scored too highly which does not recognize individual differences.
Solution: having 36 items & increasing to 4 words accounted for both the ceiling effect and individual differences
What is meant by “Easy Items”, and why was it a problem in the original study? How did they fix it?
Issue: inclusion of both basic mental states meant that some items were too easy and could be recognized without needing to attribute belief
Solution: fewer easier items
What is the significance of “Gaze-Perception”? How was it a problem in the original study, and how was it remedied?
Issue: gaze direction was sufficient to solve some items
Solution: excluded from revised version
How was female-male ratio a problem in the original study? How was it fixed?
Issue: more female than male faces
Solution: equal number of male and female faces in revised version to reduce gender bias
What is meant by “Target-foil Opposites” and how was it a problem in the study? What did they do to fix it?
Issue: target & foil were always opposites–too easy
Solution: words wouldn’t be semantic opposites
How was “unknown language” a problem in the original study, and how was it remedied?
Issue: requirement to map word to picture, meaning, didn’t know word
Solution: included glossary, and encouraged participants to use it if they were unsure of a word
Name the 3 AIMs
- To test a group of autistic adults to see if the revised version “works”
- To see if there’s an inverse correlation between eyes test and AQ for a sample of adults
- To see if females have superiority on the eyes test
What were their five predictions?
- The HFA/AS group would score lower on the eyes test than the other groups
- AS/HFA group would score much higher on the AQ than the other groups
- Females in the “normal” groups would score higher than males on the eyes test
- Males in the normal group would score higher than females on the AQ
- Scores on the AQ & eyes test would be inversely correlated (negative)
What is the explanation of the five predictions as it relates to the AIMs?
Those with AS disorders score high on the AQ. One feature of AS disorders is lack of ToM, so low scores on eyes test. Should mean inverse correlation with AS people scoring high on one variable and low on the other.
Baron-Cohen suggests that autism may be due to what he calls an “Extreme Male Brain” and that males in general have more autistic tendencies.
What method was used?
Natural experiment using questionnaires
What is the design?
Independent groups but groups 1 & 4 were matched
What is the apparatus?
The AQ, the eyes test, and a quiet room in Cambridge/Exeter
Describe the participants and sampling.
Group 1 - AS/HFA (experimental)
-15 male adults with Asperger’s Syndrome or High Functioning Autistics (IQ: 115 average) found through volunteer sampling in the U.K. National Autistic Society Magazine
WAIS-R was used to assess IQ for AS/HFA and included 4 tests: block design, vocabulary, similarities, picture completion (overall score in normal range)
Group 2 - Normal adults
- 122 people with a mix of occupations
- Secondary school only, additional occupational or degree (IQ: 115 average)
- Found through opportunity sampling from adult community/education classes at Exeter and public library users at Cambridge
Group 3 - Normal adult students
- 103 Cambridge undergrads, 53 male/50 female, 71 science/32 other subjects
- ASSUMED to have high IQ
- Sampling unspecified
Group 4 - (IQ matched control) Random adults from population
- N=14
- IQ matched with group 1
- Similar in age to group 1
- IQ: 116 average
- Sampling unspecified
How was the questionnaire designed?
- 36 black and white photos of different males’ and females’ eye regions taken from a magazine
- The images are all 15 x 10 cm
- Each photo has 4 words that describe the mental state
- Participant is presented with card, eyes, and words. Asked which word best describes what the person is thinking or feeling.
- One answer is correct and the other three are foils. Number correct is shown as the overall score.
Does this experiment have independent and dependent variables? Why or why not? If yes, what are they?
It has no TRUE IV/DV because it’s a correlational analysis.
BUT
Because this is an experiment, one would say that the IV is whether the participant is AS or not, and that the DV is whether they labeled correctly.
What is the procedure?
- All 4 groups given eye test in quiet room
- Participants in groups 1, 3, & 4 are given the AQ
- Group 1 also has to judge gender
What type of data was collected?
Quantitative, considering that the results from the eyes test and the AQ were purely numerical due to a lack of open-ended questions
What did they find?
All predictions were supported.
Group 1 had the lowest eyes test score and the lowest AQ score.
Females in groups 2 & 3 scored higher on the eyes test but NOT significantly
Males in groups 2 & 3 scored higher on the AQ but NOT significantly
Inverse correlation between AQ and eyes test
What did they conclude?
Previous research on the ToM was supported, and people with AS/HFA have some degree of weakness when working through ToM.
What were the evaluation issues?
Ecological validity
-pictures vs. real life
Nature vs. nurture
- What causes lack of ToM?
- Why would gender be used to explain?
Designing an alternative study
