Baron-cohen

Question 1

what is the key theme of this study?

Answer 1

Understanding disorders

Question 2

what is it testing?

Answer 2

it is an advanced test of theory of mind

Question 3

what type of people is it researching?

Answer 3

High functioning adults with autism or Asperger syndrome

Question 4

What is the triad of impairments for those with autism?

Answer 4

-Impairment in imagination
-Impairment in social relationships
-Impairment in social communication

Question 5

what are the supposed causes of autism?

Answer 5

-hereditary (genetic link)
-refrigerator parenting
-MMR vaccine
-diet and hormones
-actions whilst pregnant e.g smoking,drinking

Question 6

Mind blindness

Answer 6

Autistic individuals are sometimes described as having mind blindness as they appear to be unable to read minds.

Question 7

Theory of mind

Answer 7

The ability to read minds or to make inferences about what other people believe to be the case in any given situation allows us to predict what they will do.

Question 8

lack of theory of mind

Answer 8

Lacking this basic ability would make social interaction very difficult and the absence of a theory of mind would explain the core deficits of autism.

Question 9

How has theory of mind been tested previously?

Answer 9

The Sally-Ann test

Question 10

The Sally-Ann test

Answer 10

If the child says/points to ‘the basket’ they demonstrated that they have ‘theory of mind’ because they can perceive that Sally, who was out of the room, still believes the marble is in her basket.
If the child says/points to ‘the box’ then they may lack theory of mind because they are assuming that Sally is thinking what they are thinking. (The child is unable to accommodate Sally’s false belief)

Question 11

Strange stories task (Happe 1994)

Answer 11

This is a fairly advanced test for theory of mind aimed at older children, involves asking children questions about the emotions and characters in unfamiliar stories.

Question 12

“high functioning”

Answer 12

Normal/average IQ, do posses theory of mind as they can pass standard theory of mind tasks (e.g Sally-Ann task) designed for 6 year olds

Question 13

what was the eyes task made for?

Answer 13

To see if high functioning individuals with autism/aspergers do have a deficit in theory of mind skills.

Question 14

What was the aim of this study?

Answer 14

-This study attempted to provide support for a cognitive explanation of autism and particularly that adults lack advanced theory of mind skills.
-The theory of mind task used in this study is “The eyes task” ; people have to choose the best word to describe the emotion displayed in the photograph of a person’s eyes.

Question 15

Sample of group 1 ( autism )

Answer 15

16 people with high functioning autism/ AS: 13 male, 3 female. Mean IQ of 105.3 (normal)

Question 16

how were group 1 recruited?

Answer 16

Via an advert in the national autistic society magazine. (self selected sample)

Question 17

Sample of group 2 ( no condition )

Answer 17

50 age matched controls, 25 male, 25 female, neurotypical with no history of psychiatric disorders, presumed to be of normal intelligence

Question 18

how were group 2 recruited?

Answer 18

Taken from population of Cambridge via random sampling.

Question 19

Sample of group 3 ( Tourette’s )

Answer 19

10 patients with Tourette’s, 8 female, 2 male, age matched with autistic group (1) Mean IQ of 103.5-normal

Question 20

how were group 3 recruited?

Answer 20

Sample from a clinic in London. Self selected sample.

Question 21

Why did Baron Cohen use ps with tourette’s?

Answer 21

Tourette’s syndrome and autism are similar, affect same part of the brain, using both would control some of the extraneous variables.

Question 22

What did both Tourette’s and Austistic ps have in common?

Answer 22

-normal intelligence
-suffered with disorder since childhood
-had disorders that disrupted schooling & peer relations
-had disorders supposed to originate in the frontal lobe
-both most likely to affect males

Question 23

Ps in both groups passed what?

Answer 23

Autism & Tourette’s groups both passed Theory of Mind test based on 6 year-old Theory of mind skills (Sally-Ann test)

Question 24

Method and design

Answer 24

Independent measures design & Quasi Experiment- IV naturally occurring and not manipulated

Question 25

two control tasks

Answer 25

the eyes task, strange stories task (random order to avoid order effects)

Question 26

where were subjects tested?

Answer 26

in a quiet room either at home, in a clinic or in a lab on their own

Question 27

Independent variables

Answer 27

-autism
-Tourette’s syndrome
-normal (neurotypical)
-gender in normal group

Question 28

Dependent variables

Answer 28

-correct identification of emotion
-correct identification of gender

Question 29

Hypotheses

Answer 29

Patients with Tourette’s syndrome would be unimpaired on this advanced theory of mind test, but ps with autism/ Asperger’s syndrome would show significant impairment on this test.
Ps who had difficulty completing the eyes task or strange stories task should also have difficulties when completing other task.
Normal females may be superior to normal males in emotion perception.

Question 30

Procedure

Answer 30

The eyes task, the strange stories task and 2 control tasks (gender recognition of the eyes task and basic recognition task) were presented in random order to all ps.

Question 31

The eyes task
(all ps completed this task)

Answer 31

Comprises photographs of the eye region of 25 different faces (male and female). The photographs were taken from magazines and were standardised (same size 15x10cm)all black and white, all same region. (from midway along nose to just above brow) Each photo was shown for 3 seconds.

Question 32

question asked for eyes task:

Answer 32

“Which word best describes how this person is thinking/feeling?”

Question 33

Happe’s strange stories task

Answer 33

Ps in groups 1 and 3 (autism and Tourette’s) were also tested on Happe’s strange stories task, an advanced theory of mind aimed at older children.
Involves asking children questions about the emotions and intentions of characters.

Question 34

Why was Happe’s strange stories task done?

Answer 34

To check validity of the Eyes task as a test of theory of mind.
If it is a valid test then performance on the eyes task should correlate with performance on strange stories(concurrent validity)

Question 35

reason for control tasks

Answer 35

in order to check whether difficulties with the eyes task might be due to other factors, ps in groups 1 and 3 were given 2 control tasks. (autism and Tourette’s)

Question 36

The gender recognition task
(control task 1 )

Answer 36

Looking at 2 sets of eyes and identifying the gender to check whether poor performance on the eyes task was due to general deficits in face perception rather than a lack of theory of mind skills. (max score=25)

Question 37

The basic emotion recognition task
(control task 2)

Answer 37

Looking at whole faces which displayed the 6 basic emotions; happy, sad, disgust, afraid, surprise, angry) this was done to check if difficulties on the eyes task were due to difficulties with basic emotional recognition.
This task not same as eyes task as it
1-involves whole faces,
2- only tests 6 basic emotions rather than fuller range of mental states.

Question 38

Eyes task results

Answer 38

Autism group= 16.3 mean correct answers
Normal= 20.3 mean correct answers
Tourette’s= 20.4 mean correct answers

Question 39

what do these results show?

Answer 39

The normal and Tourette’s ps performed identically, whereas autistic ps were significantly less able to cope.

Question 40

Findings from the eyes task

Answer 40

Individuals with autism struggled with this task.
In normal group females performed significantly better than men.

Question 41

Findings from basic emotion recognition task

Answer 41

No differences between groups

Question 42

Findings from gender recognition task

Answer 42

No differences between groups

Question 43

Findings from Happe’s strange stories task

Answer 43

No subjects with Tourette’s syndrome made any errors, but subjects with autism/AS made errors and were significantly impaired on this task compared to the control group.

Question 44

Conclusions

Answer 44

Adults with autism/AS were impaired on theory of mind test despite having normal intelligence, therefore its concluded that a core deficit involved in autism is the lack of advanced theory of mind.

Question 45

(conclusions)
Baron-Cohen justified the theory of mind explanation for the poor performance of the autism group in following ways:

Answer 45

-Poor performance of this group could not have been due to low intelligence as these ps were in normal IQ range suggesting theory of mind is independent of general intelligence.
-Neither could it be due to development neuropsychiatric disability, since the ps with Tourette’s were not impaired on this task.
-The researchers claim the eyes task was a valid measure of ToM as;
~The target words are mental state terms.
~The target words are not just emotional states but include terms describing cognitive mental states, suggesting this task is not just an emotional perception task.