Baron Et Al

Question 1

What was Baron testing?

Answer 1

High functioning adults with autism or Asperger syndrome’s theory of mind.

Question 2

What is theory of mind?

Answer 2

Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states such as beliefs, intense desires, pretending, and knowledge to oneself and others.

Question 3

When was the study conducted?

Answer 3

1997

Question 4

What is autism?

Answer 4

A mental condition, present from early childhood, characterised by great difficulty of communicating and forming with other people and in using of language and abstract thinking. (TOM)

Question 5

What are the three traids of impairments?

Answer 5

Difficulties with social communication.
Difficulties with social interaction.
Difficulties with social imagination.

Question 6

Out of the three traids of impairment which one does barons study focus on those with autism?

Answer 6

Social communication - understanding the meaning of others without them actually say in their feelings.

Question 7

What is ass Asperger syndrome?

Answer 7

They show the same characteristics as autism but are of average or above average intelligence and appear to have a good communication skills, though this may not actually be the case.

Question 8

Why is there no conclusive evidence that show that individuals with high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome have an intact theory of mind?

Answer 8

The used tests which assess theory of mind have a ceiling effect as the tests are designed for a mental age of about six. Therefore although existing theory of mind tests are challenging the six-year-olds, they are far too easy for adults who all pass pass even though they may not have a fully functioning theory of mind.

Question 9

What was the research method of the study?

Answer 9

Quasi/natural experiment.

Question 10

What other study did barons study build upon?

Answer 10

Happe - (1994) tested adults with autism or Asperger syndrome on an advanced theory of mind task and found her participants had more difficulty with her mental state stories then matched controls.

Question 11

What was IV?

How was it operationalised?

Answer 11

The type of person likely to have theory of mind deficits (adults with high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome, ‘normal’ adults and adults with Tourette syndrome).
BIV was naturally occurring so could not be manipulated or controlled by the researchers.

Question 12

What was the DV?

How was it operationalised?

Answer 12

The performance (out of 25) on the eyes task; measured by showing each participant 25, black and white, standardised photographs of the eye region of faces (male and female) and asking them to make a forced choice between two mental state words to best describe what the person in the photograph was feeling or thinking.

Question 13

What experimental design was the study?

Answer 13

Independent, Matched pairs design because the group of normal adults and the group with TS where age-matched with the group of adults with autism or AS.

Question 14

What were the sample statistics?

Answer 14

Group 1 - 16 individuals with either high functioning autism or AS.
Group 2 - 50 normal aged matched adults.
Group 3 - 10 adults with TS also age-matched with groups one and two.

Question 15

What were the four tests used?

Answer 15

The eyes task.
The strange stories task.
The two control tasks: gender recognition of eyes task and basic recognition task (Only completed by those with autism/AS).
All were presented in random order to all participants.

Question 16

What was the purpose of the ‘reading of the mind eyes task’ in Barons study?

Answer 16

It’s shows whether adults with autism have big difficulties with social communication , not just children (shown in Sally- Anne study).

Question 17

What is the purpose of the ‘strange stories’ task in Barons study?

Answer 17

Validate the results from the eyes task and look more in depth of TOM in autistic adults.

Question 18

What was the purpose of the ‘gender recognition’ task in Barons study?

Answer 18

(Doesn’t require TOM)

The task tested for face perception, not reading the mind.

Question 19

What was the purpose of the ‘basic emotion recognition’ task in Barons study?

Answer 19

To check whether difficulties on the eyes task where due to difficulties with basic emotional recognition.

Question 20

What was the strange stories task?

Answer 20

Participants were presented with a story and had to make inferences about a character is mental state.

Question 21

What was the gender recognition task?

Answer 21

Identifying the gender of the eyes.

Tested face perception.

Question 22

What was the basic emotion recognition task?

Answer 22

Judging photos of whole faces displaying basic emotions.

Question 23

What were the mean scores (out of 25) from all three groups following the eyes task?

Answer 23

Autism/AS = 16.3
'Normal'     = 20.3
TS              = 20.4

Question 24

What results from the other three tasks?

Answer 24

Those with autism/AS made many errors in Happes strange stories task. Those with TS made no errors.
There were no differences between the groups on both the gender and emotion control tasks.

Question 25

What are the two possible conclusions that can be made from barons study?

Answer 25

1. Contrary to previous research with adults, these results seem to provide evidence that adults with autism/AS do possess an impaired theory of mind.
2. Intelligence is not linked with before performance (some of the autism group had a university degrees).

Question 26

Did the data support the first hypothesis?

Answer 26

Yes as people with autism lack theory of mind compared to ‘normal’ and TS as they scored lower.

Question 27

Does the data support the second hypothesis?

Answer 27

Yes as women score higher than men in the eyes task. (21.8:18.8)

Question 28

What type of data did Baron use and what was a strength and weakness of this?

Answer 28

Quantitive:
✅ score out of 25.
❌ too brief about theory of mind e.g. two participants could’ve scored 20 on the eyes task but my have answered the questions differently.

Question 29

How did ethics have a negative impact on Barons study?

Answer 29

The participants with additional needs may not have been comfortable being studied on.
Those with autism or TS may feel useless by being labelled with a disability.

Question 30

What were the positives and negatives of Barons study regarding validity?

Answer 30

❌Low internal validity - as participants naturally occur in the conditions it’s hard to control for EVs as another feature, other than autism, may have caused behaviour change which could have affected the results.
✅ High ecological validity - behaviour of participants are likely to reflect real-life individuals with autism as they have autism.
❌ No order effects - there were no practice or fatigue effects affecting the results as all the participants did before tasks in the same order.