Baron-Cohen (contemporary study) Flashcards
3 Aims
To develop a more advanced way to test Theory of Mind in adults with autism that wasn’t vulnerable to a ceiling effect (does not demonstrate full ability)
Investigate whether autistic adults have deficits in theory of mind compared to neurotypical adults
Investigate whether women show improved theory of mind compared to men
What is theory of mind?
The ability to work out what another person is thinking and feeling
And differentiate what you know/feel from what someone else knows and feels
Aka empathy
Autism
Neurodevelopmental disorder which involves impairments in:
Social communication
Social interaction
Social imagination
Why was baron-cohen interested in theory of mind?
To see if it was a core deficit in autism
Previous research into autism
Sally Anne test
Happes strange stories test
Sally Anne test
Girl thought her marble was
Sally Anne test
A girl had a marble in a basket and left the room, another girl moved marble into a box
When the girl comes back, where will she look for the marble?
How does the Sally Anne test test for a deficit in theory of mind?
Tests whether they can differ their own knowledge of where the marble is (box) from what the girl knows, that she believes the marble is in the basket
Test social imagination eg understand what someone else thinks
Problem with Sally Anne test
Ceiling effect: the test cannot measure the full extent of the deficit in theory of mind as it caps the ability at 6 years old’s ability of theory of mind
What happens if someone has a better ability than 6 year old (passes test) but still has a deficit? It will not be measured
Happes strange stories task
A series of scenarios that demonstrate white lies, figures of speech, irony, jokes
Then asked P why the person in the story did this to determine if P could understand the beliefs of someone in the story are different to what they say out loud
Problem with happes strange stories task
Ceiling effect: the test cannot measure the full extent of the deficit in theory of mind as it caps the ability at 8 years old’s ability of theory of mind
What happens if someone has a better ability than 8 year old (passes test) but still has a deficit? It will not be measured
What is good about Happes strange stories task?
The best method to measure theory of mind thus far so used as a standard to check for concurrent validity
Sample = for participants with autism
16 Ps with Asperger’s or ‘high functioning’ autism
13 male, 3 female
Aged 18-49
Sample method for participants with autism
Self selected sample from an advert from national autistic society magazine
Why did we use self selected sample for autistic patients?
To improve ethics, as the tests in this study maybe uncomfortable (involving eye contact and assessment of deficits)
So gain informed consent first
Neurotypical sample
50 participants
25 women 25 men
Age 18-48
Sample method for neurotypical sample
Random selection from Cambridge (excluding uni) from subject panel in Uni department
Why use a neurotypical sample?
To test hypothesis if women have better theory of mind than men in neurotypicals
And to provide a baseline theory of mind results to compare to group with autism
Sample for those with Tourette’s?
10 participants
8 male 2 female
Aged 18-47
Sample method for those with Tourette’s?
Opportunity sample, recruited from London clinic
Why did we include a sample of participants with Tourette’s?
Tourette’s is a neurodevelopmental disorder too
To control for factors such as disruptions to relationships, school life, ostracisation that autistic people may experience too
These factors may effect someone’s theory of mind instead of autism so we control for this including a sample of those with tourettes
Were the samples large enough to establish a consistent effect?
No, low external reliability
Gender mix of samples
Equal in neurotypical sample: reflects reality
Skewed for androcentric bias in autism/Tourette’s group
Is it good to have gender bias in the Tourette’s/ autism group?
arguably reflects the gender composition of those diagnosed with autism/tourettes
But may not account for if differences between gender within each disorder if the sample is too small to determine consistent effect
What is Asperger’s?
A form of high functioning autism but someone displays no delay in language development compared to high functioning autism
How many tasks in this procedure were there in total?
4
4 tasks
Happes strange stories task
Gender recognition task
Basic emotion recognition task
Eyes task
What task did all groups do?
The eyes task
What tasks did the autistic group do?
All 4
What tasks did the neurotypical sample do?
Only the eyes task
What task did the Tourette’s group do?
Eyes task and Happes strange stories task
Eyes task designed by Baron Cohen
The new test for theory of mind not vulnerable to a ceiling effect
How did the eyes task work?
Ps shown 25 pictures of eyes from a magazine
Asked to select which emotion from semantically different adjectives below picture best fit the picture
Controls for eyes task
Same source, same size, in black and white, same format displays, asked same question ‘what word best describes what this person is thinking or feeling?’
How were the words on the eyes task decided?
A panel of 4 judges generated words for the eyes task
Then 8 raters test this eyes task
Why use Happes strange stories?
To check for concurrent validity of the eyes task
Gender and emotion recognition task
Given to only autistic participants to recognise gender of eyes task/ emotions from face
To ensure deficits measured were due to theory of mind and NOT an extraneous variable eg inability to engage with the tasks in recognising eyes from photos or understand emotions (increases validity)
Testing for concurrent validity with Happes strange stories task
Testing newly designed eyes tasks gives same results as scores on Happes strange stories task
Performance on Happes correlates with performance on eyes task
Results for eyes task
Mean correct answers for those with autism = 16.3/25
Mean correct answers for neurotypical= 20.3/25
Significant difference
Neurotypical men vs women scores on eyes task
Significantly higher scores women achieved compared to men
Conclusions
Adults with autism display deficits in theory of mind despite being of average or higher than average IQ compared to those without autism
Deficit due to autism and not childhood factors as shown by no significant difference between scores of Tourette’s group with neurotypical group
Quasi experiment
Because the independent variable, ie whether you have autism, Tourette’s or neither is naturally occurring and cannot be manipulated by the researcher
Controls across each group
Ensure all Ps are of same age/ average IQ
To control for the above variables affecting scores on eyes task other than having autism
Were the eyes task a valid way to measure theory of mind?
Problem= may be susceptible to bias as the words were decided by people and maybe not an objective way to decide what emotions are displayed
Was the eyes task reliable?
Used multiple raters/judges to check for consistency in rating words for eyes task that the words chosen are consistent
