PSY2001:Developmental Psych Exam

Question 1

What are developmental disorders?(1)

Answer 1

Disorders manifesting before adulthood that disrupts normal development eg motor, cognitive, socio-emotional (one (specific) or more (pervasive) of these areas affected), can manifest in delay (longer ot develop for these individuals) or deficit (never develop specific things).

Question 2

What are the causes of developmental disorders?(3)

Answer 2

Chromosomal/genetic abnormalities-eg downs syndrome
Prenatal factors-eg oxygen deprivation in womb, maternal infection, malformations eg cerebral palsy
Unknown combination-psychological, environmental, neurological, genetic etc eg ASD.

Question 3

Early development of Autism ideas (note autism is not ASD).(2)

Answer 3

Kanner (1943) observed around 4 children with following obscure characteristics: low IQ, loneliness (“autistic aloneness”), “desire for sameness”—despite a lot more research now a lot of the criteria in existence now are built around these initial criterion.
Asperger (1944)

Question 4

Wing& Gould (1979).(4)

Answer 4

Triad of impairments:
A) in social interaction (1)lack of eye-to-eye contact,2)failure to develop peer relations)
B)in communication (3)language delay, 4)lack of varied make-believe play)
C) restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour(5)narrow interests, 6)ritualistic/compulsive behaviours)
DSM-IV need a total of 6 or more items from above with at least 2 from triad A and one each from B and C-to be diagnosed with Autism-HAS BEEN REVISED.

Question 5

DSM-IV.(3)

Answer 5

• DSM-IV need a total of 6 or more items from above with at least 2 from triad A and one each from B and C-to be diagnosed with Autism-HAS BEEN REVISED.
• Could diagnose 4 diff types of autism: autistic disorder, Asperger’s syndrome,Childhood disintegrative disorder (Heller’s syndrome) , pervasive developmental disorder “not otherwise specified”
• Concerns due to inconsistency in diagnoses and their validity-hence introduction of DSM-V.

Question 6

What is Heller’s syndrome.(1)

Answer 6

Rare form of ASD which includes delay in language, social function and motor skills.

Question 7

What are the changes made on the DSM-IV following the introduction of the new DSM-V?(3)

Answer 7

• Removal of specific diagnoses (Asperger’s, Autism), severity instead labelled and categorised by level of assistance an individual requires-ie a spectrum
• 3 impairments down to do (triads A and B merged into one with C remaining the same
• New one added which was sensory information ie hyper or hypo-reactivity

Question 8

Issues with DSM-V introduction and benefits. (5)

Answer 8

• Issues of care, insurance etc
• loss of identity eg Asperger’s Syndrome to ASD, same treatment concerns?

But a lot more benefits because:

• Allows for more nuanced diagnosis and more tailored to individual patients
• reduces inconsistency
• ICD-11 (2018) (diseases journal or something) reflected these and distinguished between those with ASD but without learning difficulties, more flexible criteria to account for cultural differences in type of play

Question 9

Islets of ability in ASD individuals. (2)

Answer 9

• Not every common only 10% show this

- Can be just as good or even better than normal individuals particularly for rote memory and spatial tasks

Question 10

Is there a gender difference in ASD?(2)

Answer 10

-Yes, males 4x more likely than females
usually due to males being more susceptible to genetic diseases as a result of sex linked diseases
-Also presented differently in the sexes eg women mask social deficits bette than males, may even go undiagnosed-criterion in midst of changing to be more accountable for this.

Question 11

What causes ASD?(3)

Answer 11

STILL NOT fully known, no clear genetic/neurological explanation

• Hereditary-twin and family study evidence
• Evidence of structural difference in brain, connection problems in neural networks, diff between boy and girls

Question 12

What is the problem with diagnosis?(3)

Answer 12

• Have to rely on behviour bc know set genetic cause there can go diagnosed, usually diagnosed at 3 (usually when see children interacting with others etc.) but symptoms can appear as early as 12-18 months (look at language aquistion lectures to see developmental milestone for why at this particular age-**think its because of ToM development begins around this time)
• Increase in diagnoses recently due to better diagnostic material but also better understanding of impairment
• developmental outcomes highly variable =between individuals so hard to determine and pin point exactly when things would occur etc.

Question 13

What are the 3 main theories to explain ASD?(3)

Answer 13

• Theory of Mind
• Executive Functioning
• Weak Central Coherence.

Question 14

Describe executive functioning (EF).(3)

Answer 14

-Prefrontal cortex- behaviours like planning, organising, inhibition, impulse control, sustaining attention, can repetitive behaviours be explained by impairment in this executive control?
-Likely not causal but early difficulties in EF might lead to specific developmental outcomes
-Correlation between EF and theory of mind (ToM), EF skills predictive of later ToM skills.
Doesn’t necessarily mean you’d have impairment in all areas for autism but there is a relationship between EFt and the symptoms.

Question 15

Describe Weak Central Coherence (WCC).(3)

Answer 15

• Central coherence is that regular people tend to process information globally where as weak is more on specifics- featural or local information (eg big S made out of small Hs would see the Hs over the S compared to non-ASD)
• Explains islets of ability-Frith and Happe (1994)-excellent rote memory, preoccupation with parts of objects, proposed as a superiority in detail identification rather than deficit in global processing.
• Thinks about repetitive behaviours but not social impairments

Question 16

Describe Theory of Mind (ToM).(2)

Answer 16

• ToM is Ability to infer the beliefs of others, despite them maybe not being the same as your own, understanding of false beliefs
• hence deficit of this means:
• Makes it difficult to interpret others’ behaviour
• Hinders social interaction
• Makes communication difficult
• Limits social understanding
• Could explain some repetitive & routine behaviours indirectly.

Question 17

What did Baren-Cohen et al. (1985) find for ASD children?(2)

Answer 17

Had typically developing (TD) age 4, down’s syndrome (DS) mental age 4 (control) and ASD mental age 4 children complete Sally-Anne task found that 80% of TD & DS children completed task successfully whereas ASD only 20% completed successfully, this shows not about general cognitive impairment but specific to ASD
-Perner et al (1989) showed similar findings in smarties task.

Question 18

What did Baren-Cohen et al. (1986) find for ASD children?(2)

Answer 18

Looked at sequencing of a mechanical, behavioural and mentalistic story
Findings:
ASD children could order and explain behavioural and mechanical stories but not mentalistic stories which randomly ordered and only said what they saw
Indicates something different about mental states that ASD people suffer with, not mechanics or structure.

Question 19

Sodian & Frith (1992).(3)

Answer 19

Deception with mean puppet

• In previous study-Which sticker is favourite, child points,, puppet removes fave sticker-TD children age 5 was when they were able to deceive the puppet (not 3 yr olds)
• In this introduced sabotage condition where if told robber is coming have a key and can lock the box (manipulate puppets behaviour) , deception-don’t have a key but can tell the puppet the box is locked (manipulate puppets beliefs)
• ASD could do sabotage but not deceive. Motivated but could not manipulate beliefs supporting ToM as fail to recognise puppet has beliefs so fails to try change them despite clearly wanting to (shown by success in sabotage condition).

Question 20

Other explanations other than ToM for Sodian& Firth exp with puppet.(6)

Answer 20

-Problem with all representations mental and non-mental eg image of somebody 30 years ago to now is false representation
-To test this Leslie &Thaiss (1992) took 15 ASD and 20 TD matched for mental age and compared performance on mental and no-mental representation tasks
-Mental task-smarties task “what do you think is in the carton” friend would say smarties but you know its a pencil
-Non-mental-Photograph task so info in photograph no longer accurate
-Findings:
No impairment in non-mental but in mental there was
-Possible explanation: unable to disengage from the object

Question 21

Hughes& Russell (1993).(2)

Answer 21

Windows task

• ASD children failed false belief task as unable to engage from knowledge of objects actual position, so fixated on sweet that cant disengage to properly answer the question
• BUT Leslie& Thaiss photograph task, able to do that, maybe it was use of the sweet in this, know TD people can suffer from curse of knowledge.

Question 22

Limitations of ToM.(3)

Answer 22

-Not all fail ASD fail these tasks, high functioning ASD children sometimes perform as TD level, challenging the universality of ToM deficits and the hypothesis itself?
Not necessarily,
-Happe (1995) showed they dont tend to solve these issues till theyre much older than TD so still developmental (ASD criteria says deficit OR developmental so still withstands)
-Or older and more experiences so may rely of different methods for passing the tasks.

Question 23

Looking at second-order belief and strange stories tasks for ASD.(2)

Answer 23

-Some high functioning ASD can still solve these, still a delay but not a complete ToM deficit
Strange Stories Task (social stories:white lies eg):
-Even those who passed 2nd order were still impaired on these tasks BUT may be too vocab loaded-know ASD comes with language impairments so maybe with all the words isnt fully tapping into their understanding of the story GETTING AROUND THIS? reading mind through the eyes test.

Question 24

Reading the mind through the eyes task Baron-Cohen et al.(1997).(3)

Answer 24

-Expressions get harder to infer during the experiment, designed to address ToM abilities of those beyond +6 abilities-had to choose correct emotion eg concerned vs unconcerned
-ASD significantly impaired compared to TD and Tourette Syndrome control group
BUT is it really ToM?
-No sig diff for gender decision or for basic emotions, performance correlates to strange stories task BUT test has been criticised particularly by ASD people who say static emotions dont provide cues that exist in real life.