Baron-Cohen et al. (autism) Flashcards
What are the triad of impairments as associated with autism?
- Socialisation and communication
- Language
- Imagination
What are the following examples of?
- Socialisation and communication
- Language
- Imagination
Triad of impairments as associated with autism
Which two of the triad of impairments affect Aperger’s syndrome?
Socialisation and communication, and imagination
What are islets of ability?
Exceptional gifts of some autistics, e.g. maths, music or art.
How did Baron-Cohen show how young children with autism lack a theory of mind?
Through their Sally-Anne test
What was the problem with the Sally-Anne test?
Not sensitive enough to test theory of mind ability in adults with autism
What are the two aims of the study?
- To show that adults with high-functioning autism or Asperger’s Syndrome lack advanced theory of mind skill
- To test gender differences in theory of mind ability.
What experimental method was used?
A quasi experiment
Why was this experiment a quasi experiment?
Because the IV was manipulated by nature (whether participants had Asperger’s, Tourette’s, or were ‘normal’)
How many groups were in this study? Name them.
3 groups:
- Asperger’s group
- Tourette’s group
- Normal
How were the groups matched in this study?
Chronological age and their IQ
Why were groups matched on chronological age and their IQ in this study?
To remove age or IQ from possibility of affecting their behaviour/theory of mind abilities (i.e. removes confounding variables)
How many participants were in the Asperger’s group?
16
How many male participants were in the Asperger’s group?
13
How many female participants were in the Asperger’s group?
3
How were participants for the Asperger’s group recruited?
National Autistic Society magazine (‘Communication’)
How many participants were in the Tourette’s group?
10
How many male participants were in the Tourette’s group?
8
How many female participants were in the Tourette’s group?
2
How were participants for the Tourette’s group recruited?
From a referral centre in London
Why was the Tourette’s group chosen?
The disorder is similar to autism in many ways:
- Causes disruption to peer relationships
- Thought to have genetic origins
- Affects more males than females
- Developmental disorder from childhood
How is Tourette’s similar to autism?
- Causes disruption to peer relationships
- Thought to have genetic origins
- Affects more males than females
- Developmental disorder from childhood
How many participants were in the normal group?
50
How many male participants were in the normal group?
25
How many female participants were in the normal group?
25
How were participants for the normal group recruited?
Selected from the general population of Cambridge
How many participants were in each group?
Asperger's = 16 Tourette's = 10 Normal = 10
Why were a group of Tourette’s Syndrome individuals used as a control comparison group?
To show that, even though they also have a neurological disorder, affecting more males than females, that lacking a theory of mind is a cognitive deficit of autism and no other neurological disorder. Therefore, Baron-Cohen were expecting that the Tourette’s group would not show any significant impairments in the theory of mind test (eyes task)
Comparisons of gender on the eyes task were taken from which group?
The normal control ‘group’ only
Describe the procedure of the eyes task.
Involved looking at a set of eyes, where two words appeared for each set, describing the mental state [not emotion] that could be best derived by looking at the eyes. For each set, one of the pair of words was a target (correct answer) and one was a foil (incorrect answer). Eyes were selected by looking through magazines and 4 judges generated target words and foils. To further check the validity, 8 independent judges had to decide from the target and the foil and there was 100% agreement.
How was validity checked on the eyes task?
- 8 independent judges had to decide from the target and the foil and there was 100% agreement.
- Use of Happe’s strange stories, already existing (and proven reliable) task, thus a concurrent validity check
Give 3 examples of target and foil words as given in the eyes task.
- Attraction/Worried
- Friendly/Hostile
- Calm/Anxious
Give one example of target and foil words as given in the eyes task.
Calm/Anxious
How did the eyes task measure advanced theory of mind?
You have to infer what the person is thinking from the expression in their eyes.
Define theory of mind.
Ability to understand that others have different feelings/mental states to our own.
Define core cognitive deficit.
Lack of main cognitive functions
Describe the procedure of Happe’s strange stories task.
Questions were answered on a selection of short stories about a character’s thought
Describe the procedure of Happe’s strange stories task.
Questions were answered on a selection of short stories about a character’s thoughts, such as interpreting short social vignettes in which an ambiguous statement was made - e.g. A child coughs repeatedly and her father says “Poor Emma; you must have a frog in your throat”.
What were the results of Happe’s strange stories task?
Children with autism are more likely that comparison children to conclude that such statements were literally true and used fewer explanations involving mental states.
How was Happe’s strange stories task a concurrent validity check on the Eyes task?
If scores were similar on both of these tasks, this would give the Eyes Task concurrent validity because as Happe’s strange stories are already believed a valid way of measuring theory of mind, any other test that gives the same result should also be measuring theory of mind, so it is also valid.
Name the control tasks.
Gender task + Basic emotion task
Describe the procedure of the gender task.
Looking at the same sets of eyes as in the Eyes task, but this time participants just had to identify the gender of the person and not their mental state. This is a test of social judgement of gender rather than theory of mind.
What was the gender task used for?
To control confounding variables
Describe the procedure of the basic emotion task.
Looking at whole faces and deciding which of six emotions (fear; happiness; anger; surprise; sadness; disgust) was showed. Testing judgement of basic emotion rather than mental state.
What would be suggested if the autistic group failed both the basic emotion task AND the eyes task?
Poor performance on the eyes task was caused by a problem of recognising emotional expression, not theory of mind skills.
Which of the 3 groups were less likely to succeed at identifying the mental state in the eyes task?
The autistic group
What conclusions can you draw from the following set of results about each groups performance on the Eyes task? [mean score out of 25]
- Autistic = 16.3
- Tourette’s = 20.3
- Normal = 20.4
- Autistics significantly less likely to identify correctly the mental state than the two control groups
- No significant difference between Tourett’es and Normal’s results, suggesting their theory of mind ability is the same (thus Tourette’s have advanced theory of mind skill)
What were the results of the eyes task?
Autistics significantly less likely to identify correctly the mental state than the two control groups
What were the results of the Happe’s strange stories task?
No participants with Tourette’s made any errors but the autistics made significant ones
In the results of the Happe’s strange stories task, no participants with Tourette’s made any errors but the autistics made significant ones. What does this mean?
There was concurrent validity between this task and the eyes task.
a) What were the results of the Happe’s strange stories task?
b) What do they mean?
a) No participants with Tourette’s made any errors but the autistics made significant ones
b) There was concurrent validity between this task and the eyes task.
What were the 4 dependent variables in this study?
- Eyes task
- Happe’s strange stories task
- Gender task [control]
- Basic emotion task [control]
What were the results of the gender task?
No differences between the groups
What were the results of the emotion-control task?
No differences between the groups
What were the results of the gender task and emotion-control task?
No differences between the groups
What were the results of the second aim?
Females did significantly better than males on the eyes task
Give statistical evidence that females did better than males on the eyes task.
Males = av. score of 18.8 (/25) Females = av. score of 21.8 (/25)
What were the conclusions of the study?
- Adults with autism/asperger’s performed poorly on eyes task, thus autism’s core cognitive deficit = lack of advanced theory of mind
- Some of the autistic group passed the eyes task so one cannot suggest it is the CORE cog. def.
Some of the autistic group passed the eyes task. What does this suggest.
Lacking advanced theory of mind is not the CORE cognitive defecit
What are the criticisms of the eyes task?
- Forced choice between only 2 responses thus 50% chance of selecting the correct answer.
- Inclusion of both basic (happy;sad) and complex (hostile;reflective) mental states
- More female faces than male ones
- Potential comprehension difficulties with words themselves
Why is forced choice a criticism of the eyes task?
Difficult to identify individual differences as it is easy to perform quite well or poorly simply by chance
Why is inclusion of both basic and complex mental states a criticism of the eyes task?
Basic mental states = too easy to get right so there is no need to attribute a cognitive intention/mental state to the person. Could possibly lead to ceiling effects and hinders our ability to identify individual differences.
Why is inclusion of more female than male faces a criticism of the eyes task?
Perhaps female faces are more expressive than male ones which creates a bias?
Why is potential comprehension difficulties with words themselves a criticism of the eyes task?
This would lower the validity of the test
What are ceiling and floor effects?
Ceiling = too easy so not measuring individual differences in scores as they all would have done well Floor = too hard so not measuring individual differences in scores as they all would have done poorly
What are ceiling effects?
Too easy so not measuring individual differences in scores as they all would have done well
What are floor effects?
Too hard so not measuring individual differences in scores as they all would have done poorly
Describe Baron-Cohen’s controls in his study.
- Use of 2 tasks (gender; basic emotion) to ensure any failure on the eyes task was not caused by problems of identifying gender or emotions but by lack of theory of mind
- Use of Tourette’s group allowed BC to see whether lacking theory of mind was a cognitive deficit of autism or general neurological disorders with social and communication problems
How did Baron-Cohen ensure validity in his study?
- Asking 8 independent judges to choose the correct target from the two mental states and 100% agreement was given – measured what they claimed to
- Happe’s strange stories used as concurrent validity check with Eyes task, as the autistic group performed significantly poorer on both of these
Why was the use of the gender and basic emotion task a way of controlling confounding variables in the study?
Showed failure on the eyes task was not caused by problems of identifying gender or basic emotions but by lack of theory of mind
Why was the use of the 8 independent judges a way of ensuring validity in the study?
Suggested target words with their respective eye pictures were measuring what they claimed to measure
Why could you suggest this research is low in ecological validity?
In real life we do not judge other’s mental states through still pictures – we see whole moving faces.
a) Why could you suggest this research is low in ecological validity?
b) How could you improve this?
a) In real life we do not judge other’s mental states through still pictures – we see whole moving faces.
b) Get participants to judge the mental states of people in real life, who act out their thoughts using their face and eyes.
The study lacks ecological validity because in real life we do not judge other’s mental states through still pictures – we see whole moving faces. How could you improve this?
Get participants to judge the mental states of people in real life, who act out their thoughts using their face and eyes.
How is the study useful in real life?
Training can improve theory of mind skills to help them better communication skills etc.
What was the original test of theory of mind that is used with children but is too easy to pass with Autistic adults?
Sally-Anne test
What was the validity measure that assessing the validity of the test against an existing test?
Concurrent validity
What was the number of conditions in this study?
3
People suffering from this disorder were used as a control group.
Tourette’s syndrome.
What was high as all participants had very similar levels of intelligence?
Control
The difference in what skill helped identify those with autism and those with asperger’s?
Language
A criticism of the eyes task is that it suffered from this questioning technique, contributing to a high risk of success by chance.
Forced choice
What is the type of effect where the test is too hard so everyone scores poorly?
Floor effect
Some autistics have what special gifts?
Islets of ability
What is the cognitive skill thought to be the core cognitive deficit in autism?
Theory of mind
What was the new advanced theory of mind task devised for this experiment?
Eyes task
What is the type of experiment where the independent variable is manipulated by nature?
Quasi
What task was used as a concurrent validity check with the eyes task?
Happe’s strange stories
What is the type of effect where the test is too easy so everyone scores well?
Ceiling effect
What is thought not to affect abilities in theory of mind?
Intelligence
A criticism of the eyes task is that it may have lacked validity as it could be measuring what?
Comprehension
What is one of the control tasks used?
Gender task/basic emotion task
a) Briefly describe the eyes task. [2]
b) Describe how the validity of this task was checked. [2]
a) The eyes task involved looking at a pair of eyes and having to determine the person’s mental state. Two words giving potential mental states were given with each pair of eyes: one target (correct answer), such as “friendly” and one foil (incorrect answer), such as “hostile”.
b) /
Briefly describe the eyes task. [2]
The eyes task involved looking at a pair of eyes and having to determine the person’s mental state. Two words giving potential mental states were given with each pair of eyes: one target (correct answer), such as “friendly” and one foil (incorrect answer), such as “hostile”.
Describe how the validity of the eyes task was checked. [2]
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Why were a group of Tourette’s syndrome sufferers used as a control group? [2]
Tourette’s sufferers were used as a control group to prove that a lack of theory of mind was a cognitive deficit specific to autism, rather than being a cognitive deficit in neurological disorders (such as Tourette’s syndrome) in general.
Outline two criticisms of the eyes task. [4]
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This is referred to as a ‘quasi’ experiment. What does this mean and how does it relate to this study? [2]
A quasi experiment means the independent variable is manipulated by nature. In this study, BC could not manipulate whether or not participants had autism/Tourette’s/no neurological disorder.
Describe one result found by Baron-Cohen in their study on autism. [2]
One result of the study was that participants with autism performed worst of the 3 groups on the eyes task. THis backs up BC’s theory that adults with high-functioning autism lack theory of mind, which is what the eyes task was testing for.
Why were all three groups matched on IQ? [2]
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Outline two ways in which the participants were tested. [4]
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Outline two ways in which the participants were tested. [4]
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