individual differences ( baron- Cohen) Flashcards
what is autism and how does it affect people
Autism is a developmental disorder that affects about 1/100 people in the UK
People with autism often:
Have inflexible routines and become distressed if these routine are broken
Like controlled environments
Possibly have a specific focus/interest
May prefer to be alone
Have difficulty interacting with others
Avoid eye contact
Show repetitive behaviour or phrases
sally anne doll test
This was one of the first tests developed to measure theory of mind.
Most children pass this test at the age of 5 or 6 years.
Children with autism have more difficulty with the test.
strange stories
Francesca Happé developed the ‘Strange Stories’ task to assess theory of mind in older children.
Participants were presented with 2 examples of each of 12 different story types including: lie, white lie, joke, figure of speech and irony.
After hearing the story, they have to explain why the character said what he/she did.
Answers scored as correct/incorrect and involving either mental states or physical factors
problems with the sally Anne and strange stories test
Most children are able to pass the Sally-Anne test at the age of 6 years.
Most children are also able to pass the Strange stories task at around 9 years.
reading the mind in the eyes task
Each participant would be shown 25 pictures of people’s eyes – one at a time for 3 seconds
Given a forced choice from two terms – had to decide which best describes the mental state of the person in the picture (e.g. playful message or serious message)
hypotheses
Adults with autism or Asperger’s Syndrome will be impaired compared to controls on a theory of mind test called the Eyes Task (despite being of normal IQ)
Females would perform better on the Eyes Task than males (in normal population)
sample
In the study, participants with high functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome were compared against ‘normal’ participants (those without any developmental disorders) as well as a 3rd group with Tourette’s syndrome.
what is the IV
The ‘condition’ of the participants - i.e. if they had autism, Tourette’s syndrome or had no developmental disorder (‘normal’)
what is the DV
Performance on the eyes task (the number of emotions they correctly recognised)
procedure
Each participant was tested individually at their home, the clinic or at the university. Four tasks were used in the study.
the eyes task
strange stories
gender recognition
basic emotion
gender recognition task
Participants saw the same 25 sets of eyes that were used in the eyes task.
They had to state if the person in each picture was male or female
basic emotion recognition
Participants shown black and white photographs of a whole face.
Each of 6 faces showed a different basic emotion (happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgust, surprise)
results eyes task
Condition
Mean score (total =25)
Adults with AS or high functioning autism
16.3
Normal adults
20.3
Adults with Tourette’s syndrome
20.4
gender differences on eyes task
Gender of participants in the normal group
Mean score (total =25)
Females
21.8
Males
18.8
other results
Adults with autism also performed worse than both ‘normal’ participants and the Tourette’s syndrome group on the strange stories task
BUT they did not show any differences in performance on either of the control tasks.
conclusions
Adults with autism or AS (despite being of normal or above average IQ) have subtle deficits in their ‘mindreading’ abilities.
Within the ‘normal’ population, adult females are significantly better than adult males at mindreading (i.e. recognising emotions).
