Baron-cohen's Study Flashcards
What are the triad of impairment for autism?
Social communication
Social interaction
Social imagination
What is theory of mind?
The ability to pick up on what another person is thinking or feeling and recognise that other people have different thoughts, knowledge and emotions to our own
What were the aims of Baron-Cohen’s study?
To investigate whether adults with autism still experience a deficit in Theory of Mind
To develop a new ‘advanced’ way of testing Theory of Mind that would be appropriate for adults
What were the three categories of the sample of Baron-Cohen’s study? How many participants were in each?
Autism or Asperger’s syndrome - 16 (4 autism)
‘Normal’ adults - 50 (25 female,25 male)
Tourette’s syndrome - 10 (8 male, 2 female)
Define Autism
A lifelong developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to other people - also effects how they make sense of the world around them
What are Savant Autistics?
People with autism who have an extraordinary gift in a particular skill or academic area - 10% of those with Autism
What was the Sally Anne task (background to Baron-cohen)?
a previous study by Baron-Cohen to establish what young children with autism were capable of understanding
Were told the story of how Sally put her marble in a basket, Anne moved the marble to the box - when Sally came back, kids were asked where she would look for the marble. The autistic children said the box because they didn’t understand that Sally wouldn’t know that.
Why did Baron-Cohen also use the Happe strange stories task?
As it already been validated, if it gave similar results to the eyes task, then this would give concurrent validity and more validity to the eyes task
Why did Baron-Cohen think a new test needed to be developed to test theory of mind in adults?
Happe’s strange story task - the universally used theory of mind test - had been developed for use with 8-9 year olds, so there was the risk of it having a ceiling effect with adults
Explain the Happe’s strange story task
Participants presented with two examples of each of 12 story types - e.g. lie, white lie, joke, figure of speech and irony. In each story, a character says something which is not literally true, and the participant is asked to explain why the character said what they did.
What were the four tasks of Baron-Cohen’s study?
Strange stories task
Gender recognition task
Basic emotion recognition task
Eyes task
Why did Baron-Cohen choose to have a third sample of people with Tourette’s syndrome?
because it was also a developmental disorder, with similar IQ and more males affected - similar to autism - but those with Tourette’s do have ToM, so it controlled for the effect of having a developmental disorder - labelling
Outline the gender recognition task of Baron-Cohen’s study
Participants looked at the same eyes as the eyes task and had to identify the gender of the person in each photo
Outline the basic emotion recognition task of Baron-Cohen’s study
Participants shown photos of whole faces - six faces for the six basic emotions - happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgust and surprise
Outline the eyes task of Baron-Cohen’s study
Each participants was shown 25 pictures of eye regions - one at a time for 3 seconds
Forced choice between two semantically opposite terms - had to decide which best described the mental state of the person in the picture
What were the eyes task photos like?
Always black and white, taken from a magazine, 15x10 cm, of the same area of the face
What were the results of the eyes task in Baron-Cohen’s study? (mean scores of each group - not gender)
Autism or AS - 16.3
‘Normal’ - 20.3
Tourette’s - 20.4
What were the results of the eyes task in Baron-Cohen’s study? (mean scores of each group - gender)
Males - 18.8
Females - 21.8
What were the other results of Baron-cohen’s study (not eyes task)?
Those with autism struggles on Strange Stories task whereas others with Tourette’s didn’t
Those with autism were not impaired on the control tasks
What were the conclusions of Baron-Cohen’s study?
adults with autism, despite being of normal IQ have subtle deficits in mindreading abilities
Within the normal population, adult females are significantly better at mindreading than males
What are two similarities between Freud’s study and Baron-cohen’s study?
They both had small samples
They both collected some data in patients homes
They both looked for an underlying process to explain a disorder in order to alleviate a person’s difficulties
What are two differences between Freud’s study and Baron-cohen’s study?
The way in which they explain disorders (psychodynamic vs cognitive)
The research methods used ( case study vs quasi experiment)
How has the study by Baron-cohen changed our understanding of ‘understanding disorders’?
Shown how other conceptual frameworks can be used to understand disorders
Shows how experimental methods can be used (rather than case studies)
Has told us about a different disorder than phobias
Investigates disorders in adults rather than children
How has the study by Baron-cohen changed our understanding of ‘individual diversity’?
It adds to our understanding of individual diversity as while Freud taught us more the phobias that some individuals can experience, Baron-Cohen tells us more about the autistic spectrum disorder that affects some people.
