Social Cognition: Theory of Mind Flashcards
What is Theory of Mind?
Our personal understanding of what other people and feeling.
What is autism?
Umbrella term for a wide range of symptoms.
All disorders on the spectrum share impairments to three main areas: empathy, social communication and social imagination.
Which piece of research tested intentional reasoning in toddlers?
Andrew Meltzoff (1988)
What was the procedure of Meltzoff (1988)?
Children observed 18 month adults place beads into a jar.
Experimental condition: appeared to struggle and some beads fell out of jar.
Control condition: adults placed beads successfully in jar.
What was the findings of Meltzof (1988)?
In both conditions, the toddlers did successfully place the beads in the jar, they dropped no more beads in the experimental conditions.
Suggests they were imitating what the adults INTENDED to do rather than what they actually did.
What is a false belief task?
A task to test whether individuals with autism understand that people can believe something about the world that is not true.
What are two examples of false belief task studies?
Sally Anne Task
Wimmer and Perner
What happened in the Sally Anne Task?
Sally placed marble in basket, left and Anne switched marble to her box. Asked children aged 3-4 where Sally will look for her marble.
Who were the participants in the Sally Anne task?
20 high functioning children diagnosed with ASD and control group of 27 children no diagnosis, compared to a group of 14 children with down syndrome.
What was the results of the Sally Anne task?
85% of control group correctly identified where Sally would look.
20% of the ASD group.
What was an issue with the Sally Anne task?
The “ceiling effect”. The Sally Anne task can only be used as a test of TOM/autism up to age of 6 as it becomes easy after this despite diagnosis of autism.
Therefore, doesn’t apply to adults with autism.
What did Baren-Cohen create in response to the issue with the Sally Anne task?
Created a test called the “Eyes Task” whereby individuals had to read emotions in pictures of eyes.
What was the procedure of the Eyes Task?
Participants were shown pairs of eyes along with a target and foil word.
Participants were asked, ‘Which word best describes what this person is thinking or feeling?’ and had to choose what they thought was the correct word before moving on to the next eyes photograph.
All photographs were black and white and measured 10x15cm.
All presented 25 photos.
Who were the participants in the Eyes Task?
Group 1 consisted of sixteen participants with high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome.
Group 2 consisted of fifty age-matched controls (25 male and 25 female)
Group 3 consisted of ten participants with Tourette syndrome (8 males 2 females)
What was the results of the Eyes Task?
Autism/AS Group – 16.3 (Range: 13 – 23)
‘Normal’ Adults – 20.3 (Range: 16 – 25)
Tourettes Group – 20.4 (Range: 16 – 25)
