Cognitive- Baron- Cohen

Question 1

IV?

Answer 1

Type of participant, high functioning autism, normal adults and adults with Tourettes.

Question 2

DV?

Answer 2

Performance of of 25 on the eyes task measured by showing the participants 25 sets of black and white eyes and asking them to choose from a set of mental state words how they were feeling.

Question 3

Sample?

Answer 3

3 groups:

1. 16 high functioning autism or Aspergers (HFA-4, AS-12), sex ratio was 13:3 (m:f) and all were of normal intelligence and recruited through an advert in a magazine, National autistic society.
2. 50 normal age matched adults drawn from general population of Cambridge, sex ratio 25:25 (m:f)
3. 10 adults with Tourettes age matched with both groups and sex ratio was 8:2 (m:f) recruited from a tertiary referral centre in London.

Question 4

Procedure?

Answer 4

Eyes task- 25 sets of eyes and had to choose their emotion
Strange stories task and 2 control tasks, gender recognition (same eyes from eyes task and had to see if they were male or female).

Question 5

Quantitative results?

Answer 5

Results of eyes task:
Autism- mean: 16.3 range: 13-23
Normal- mean: 20.3 range: 16-25
Tourettes- mean: 20.4 range: 16-35

Question 6

Qualitative results?

Answer 6

Mean score for adults with Tourettes and normal adults wasn’t significantly different, both a lot higher than autism group.
Normal females performed significantly better than normal males on the eyes task but normal males (21.8 vs 18.8) still performed much better than Austrian.
On the gender and emotion task there was no difference between groups.

Question 7

Conclusion?

Answer 7

Evidence that adults with Autism/AS do actually possess an impaired theory of mind and TOM deficits are independent from General intelligence.

Question 8

Research method?

Answer 8

Quasi experiment as the IV is naturally occurring. Matched pairs was used, matched on age.