Baron-Cohen et al (Autism in adults) Flashcards
Carried out in? Baron-Cohen
1997
What is Theory of mind (ToM)? ,,Baron-Cohen
The ability to attribute mental states, beliefs, intentions, desires, emotions, knowledge, etc to oneself, and to others, and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one’s own.
Autism spectrum disorder? (the different levels),, Baron-Cohen
Level 1 (high functioning autism) - Requiring support; difficulty initiating social interactions; inflexibility of behaviour; difficulty switching activities; problems with organisation.
Level 2 (autism) - Requiring substantial support; marked deficits with social interactions; inflexibility of behaviour; difficulty or distress coping with change; repetitive behaviours.
Level 3 (serve autism) - Requiring very substantial support; serving deficits with social interactions and communication; inflexibility of behaviour; extreme difficulty or distress coping with change; repetitive behaviours interfere with functioning.
What is Tourette’s syndrome ?,, Baron-Cohen
It is a condition that causes a person to make involuntary sounds and movements called tics. It usually starts during childhood, but the tics and other symptoms usually improve after several years and sometimes go away completely.
Simple motor tics are sudden, brief, repetitive movements that involve a limited number of muscles of group d. Some of the more common simple tics include eye blinding and other eye movements, facial grimacing, shoulder shrugging, and head or shoulder jerking.
Despite the common misconception that tourette’s syndrome is defined by uncontrollable and socially inappropriate swearing, only about 10% swear with tourettes.
Theories on which the study is based?,, Baron-Cohen
In recent years it has been maintained that all autisitc people have a common core deficit ‘mind-blindness’ This is a severe impairment in their understanding of mental states and how mental states govern behaviour. They lack a ToM
Because autistic individuals fail to develop the ability to attribute mental states to other people, fundamental implications arise for communication, where making sense of other’s intentions enables the listener to understand what is being said (interred/ intended)
Classic autism» Asperger’s syndrome» Normality
Aim?, Baron-Cohen
To find out if individuals on the autistic spectrum had deficits with ToM.
To find out if there were gender differences in ToM.
Method?, Baron-Cohen
Quasi-expermiental (the independent variable was naturally occurring and could not be manipulated by the experimenters)
IV: type of person:
Adults with tourrette’s
Adults with Autism/Asperger’s
‘Normal’ adults
DV: performance on the eye task (out of 25)
Sample?,, Baron-Cohen
Had 3 groups.
Group 1: 16 individuals with high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome (HFA= 4, As=12) The sex ratio was 13:3 (male: female) had normal intelligence and were recruited through an advert in the national magazine and a variety of clinical sources (volunteer sampling)
Group 2: 50 normal age-matched adults (25 males, 25 females), drawn from the general population of Cambridge (random sampling)
Group 3: 10 adults with Tourette syndrome also age-matched with groups 1 and 2. The sex ration was 8:2 (male:female) all were of normal intelligence and were recruited form a tertiary referral center in London. (snowball sampling)
Materials/ Apparatus used?,, Baron-Cohen
Materials from the eyes task and gender recognition task. All the images from these tasks were standardised: they were black and white, all the same size , they were all crops slightly above the eyebrows and at the bridge of the nose.
Task 1: In the eye task, the photographs were couples with 2 words which described a mental state. 1 of the 2 words which describes a mental state. 1 of the words was the correct stat displayed in the photograph and the other 1 was a fail. For example, ‘happy’ and ‘sad’. The photographs were all appraised by a panel of independent judges to gain an accurate and reliable word for each photograph.
Some different examples of faces were:
Concerned or unconcerned
Noticing you or ignoring you
Relaxed or worried
Task 2: He also did a gender recognition task. They were asked to identify the gender of the person in the photograph before they were being made to make a forced choice of mental states.
This is control task and controlled for face perception, perceptual discrimination and social perception.
Task 3: There was also a basic emotion recognition task, where participants were shown full faces. There were 6 different basic emotions.
Task 4: Happes strange stories happen. It involved participants being presented with a short story and then being asked questions about the story. It was used to validate the findings from the eyes task.
Procedures?,, Baron-Cohen
All the participants were tested in a quiet environment, which was either their own, or in a laboratory setting.
Results?,, Baron-Cohen
Autism/ As group - 16.3 (range: 13-23)
‘Normal’ adults - 20.3 (range: 16-25)
Tourette’s group - 20.4 (range: 16-25)
Males - 18.8 (range 16-22)
Females - 21.8 (range: 20-25)
Mean score on the gender recognition task.
Conclusions?,, Baron-Cohen
Contrary to previous research with adults, these results seem to provide evidence that adults with autism/ AS do possess an impaired ToM.
As some of the autism/ AS group hold uni degrees and were all normal intelligence, it is reasonable to suggest that ToM deficits are independent of general intelligence.
Findings?
There wasn’t much of a difference between the Tournette and ‘normal’ group. In Autism/AS, there was no relationship between IQ on the eye tasks
On both the gender recognition task and the basic emotion recognition tasks. There were no significant differences between the groups.
THe Autism/AS made significantly more errors on the strange stories task compared with the other groups.
