Baron-cohen's Study

Question 1

What are the triad of impairment for autism?

Answer 1

Social communication
Social interaction
Social imagination

Question 2

What is theory of mind?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

What were the aims of Baron-Cohen’s study?

Answer 3

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

Question 4

What were the three categories of the sample of Baron-Cohen’s study? How many participants were in each?

Answer 4

Autism or Asperger’s syndrome - 16 (4 autism)
‘Normal’ adults - 50 (25 female,25 male)
Tourette’s syndrome - 10 (8 male, 2 female)

Question 5

Define Autism

Answer 5

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

Question 6

What are Savant Autistics?

Answer 6

People with autism who have an extraordinary gift in a particular skill or academic area - 10% of those with Autism

Question 7

What was the Sally Anne task (background to Baron-cohen)?

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

Why did Baron-Cohen also use the Happe strange stories task?

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Why did Baron-Cohen think a new test needed to be developed to test theory of mind in adults?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Explain the Happe’s strange story task

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

What were the four tasks of Baron-Cohen’s study?

Answer 11

Strange stories task
Gender recognition task
Basic emotion recognition task
Eyes task

Question 12

Why did Baron-Cohen choose to have a third sample of people with Tourette’s syndrome?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Outline the gender recognition task of Baron-Cohen’s study

Answer 13

Participants looked at the same eyes as the eyes task and had to identify the gender of the person in each photo

Question 14

Outline the basic emotion recognition task of Baron-Cohen’s study

Answer 14

Participants shown photos of whole faces - six faces for the six basic emotions - happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgust and surprise

Question 15

Outline the eyes task of Baron-Cohen’s study

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What were the eyes task photos like?

Answer 16

Always black and white, taken from a magazine, 15x10 cm, of the same area of the face

Question 17

What were the results of the eyes task in Baron-Cohen’s study? (mean scores of each group - not gender)

Answer 17

Autism or AS - 16.3
‘Normal’ - 20.3
Tourette’s - 20.4

Question 18

What were the results of the eyes task in Baron-Cohen’s study? (mean scores of each group - gender)

Answer 18

Males - 18.8
Females - 21.8

Question 19

What were the other results of Baron-cohen’s study (not eyes task)?

Answer 19

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

Question 20

What were the conclusions of Baron-Cohen’s study?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

What are two similarities between Freud’s study and Baron-cohen’s study?

Answer 21

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

Question 22

What are two differences between Freud’s study and Baron-cohen’s study?

Answer 22

The way in which they explain disorders (psychodynamic vs cognitive)
The research methods used ( case study vs quasi experiment)

Question 23

How has the study by Baron-cohen changed our understanding of ‘understanding disorders’?

Answer 23

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

Question 24

How has the study by Baron-cohen changed our understanding of ‘individual diversity’?

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

How has the study by Baron-Cohen changed our understanding of ‘Social diversity’?

Answer 25

while Freud only tells us about 1 male child, ‘Little Hans’ and how the Oedipus complex is experienced by males, Baron-Cohen looks at how males and females differ in their ability to ‘read minds’ i.e. infer what other people are thinking/feeling.

Question 26

How hasn’t the study by Baron-Cohen changed our understanding of ‘cultural diversity’?

Answer 26

Freud only looks at a participant from Austria and Baron-Cohen only looks at participants from the UK. As they are looking at different disorders this does not expand our understanding of cultural diversity for either disorder.

Question 27

How does Baron-Cohen’s study link to the area of individual differences?

Answer 27

looking at the ways people differ rather than are similar - How they differ in terms of being on the autistic spectrum

Question 28

How does Baron-Cohen’s study link to the cognitive area?

Answer 28

Internal mental processes - Theory of mind/empathy deficit - recognising the thoughts and feelings of others is a cognitive process

Question 29

How does Baron-Cohen’s study link to the theme of ‘understanding disorders’?

Answer 29

looking at autism and impairment of theory of mind - using eyes task to measure this quantitatively

Question 30

How does Baron-Cohen’s study link to the free-will - determinism debate?

Answer 30

Biological determinism - theory of mind seen to be the determining factor in difficulties they face
Free - will - programmes (e.g childrens tv shows) can be followed - you choose to be educated

Question 31

How does Baron-Cohen’s study link to the nature-nurture debate?

Answer 31

nature - inherent condition - from birth - Autism seen to be a developmental condition
nurture - Tried to put together programmes to help people learn these abilities - shows environment can have an impact

Question 32

How does Baron-Cohen’s study link to the individual-situational debate?

Answer 32

Individual - deficits in the ToM in Autistic people is assumed to link to a disorder which is internal to that person
Situational - once the difficulties are understood, it might be easier to change the environment to help them e.g. headphones

Question 33

How does Baron-Cohen’s study demonstrate concurrent validity?

Answer 33

Used eye test and Happe strange story test - both showed that autistic/As participants impaired in Theory of Mind

Question 34

How does Baron-Cohen’s study link to population validity?

Answer 34

Looks at 3 different groups
significantly fewer female (neuro-divergent) - but does consider both - but males more likely to be diagnosed so more representative
All from around Cambridge area

Question 35

How does Baron-Cohen’s study link to ecological validity?

Answer 35

Photos all black and white, without whole face or context - unlike real life - you also wouldn’t normally see a static face and participants only had 3 seconds to identify the emotion

Question 36

How does Baron-Cohen’s study link to internal reliability?

Answer 36

Had lots of controls - very standardised - photos all same size and section of face
But some location wasn’t controlled - some at home, some in clinic and some at Uni of Cambridge - potentially justified for participants comfort?

Question 37

How does Baron-Cohen’s study link to external reliability?

Answer 37

Possibly low - only 4 actually autistic people - too small a sample to establish any reliable effect
But 50 ‘normal’ - overall sample size relatively large