Baron-Cohen

Question 1

What is the background to this study?

Answer 1

Autism is a triad of impairments, where people may struggle with:
-Social communication, social interaction and social imagination
Autism is a spectrum disorder, where it varies between person

Question 2

What did baron cohen aim

Answer 2

To investigate whether adults with autism still experience a deficit in theory of mind

To develop a new way to test theory of mind that is appropriate for adults

Question 3

What was the sample like ?

Answer 3

16 adults with either autism or aspergers syndrome, recruited via an advert

50 normal adults, recruited from the general population

10 adults with tourettes syndrome, recruited from a referral centre in london

Question 4

What was the procedure like?

Answer 4

Participants took the reading the mind in the eyes task.
-they had to say which of two semantically opposite words 25 pairs of eyes related to.

After, they completed the strange stories task. Baron cohen did this to ensure that he was actually measuring the theory of mind.

The autistic participants were also asked to identify the gender of the participants in the eyes task, and six basic emotions from photos of whole photos. If they failed either of these tasks, they were not given the eyes task

Question 5

What were the findings?

Answer 5

Adults with autism did the worst in the eyes task, with 16.3/25

This suggests that the deficit in the theory of mind persists into adulthood for people with autism, and that the eyes task is successful as a test to pick this up.

Females performed better than males