Baron cohen Flashcards
aim
to test whether high functioning adults with autism and Aspergers would struggle with a new and more difficult test for theory of mind known as the ‘eyes task’
how did show whether the test for theory of mind was particularly hard for those on the autistic spectrum
their results were compared with a group with no clinical condition and a group with a different disorder, Tourettes
sample
volunteer sampling- autism group with 13 men and 3 women of normal intelligence and with a diagnosis of high functioning autism or asperger syndrome
control group of 25 men and 25 women with no autism who were of normal intelligence
8 men and 2 women with tourettes
why was it important to have people with tourettes
because tourettes had several key elements in common with autism such as it exists in childhood and disrupts schooling and relationships
if theory of mind is specifically a problem with autism as opposed to being simply the result of a child hood discrupted by a psychological condition, the autism group would be expected to do worse on the Eyes task than the tourettes group
procedure
participants were shown 25 black and white photographs of eyes for three seconds each and asked to chose betwwen 2 mental states represented by the photographs eg. sad or afraid
how did they eliminate the possibility that the autism group simply had a visual problem that meant they couldnt process the photographs
all ppts also completed 2 control tasks; a gender recognition task where they had to identity the gender of the eyes and a basic emotion recognition task where the ppts had to identify basic emotions of photographs of whole faces
how did they test that the eyes task measured theory of mind
ppts in the autism and tourettes group also took another test called Happes Strange Stories. if the eyes task really measured theory of mind, then those who struggle with the eyes task should also score less well in the strange stories test
resuults
all groups performed normally in the control tasks however in the eyes task, the autism group did signifanctly worse than the 2 control groups scoring 16.3 out of 25
no ppts in the tourettes group were incorrect in any of their strange stories responses but the autism group struggled whih is evidence for the validity of the eyes task
conclusions
- even high functioning adults with autism, including those with aspergers, have a significant prooblem with theory of mind
- the eyes task is a valid theory of mind test suitable for high functioning adults with autism
what is theory of mind
if you lack theory of mind you find it hard to read mental states in other people which leads to difficulty forming friendships
validity
low ecological validity because the experience of judging emtoion is different from real life experiences of judging emotions in whole moving faces with speech
however they did include a test for validity with the strange stories task which supported the validity of the eyes task
reliability
ppts were known the same pictures of the same size 15x10cm for the same exact time of three seconds
practical applications
the study showed that high functioning adults with autism struggle with theory of mind which could open up practical ways in helping them to manage this eg. teaching them to make use of different visual cues to judge emotion
