Baron-Cohen - theory of mind

Question 1

What is neurodiversity

Answer 1

1. Denotes variation in cognitive functioning
2. Neurodiversity movement - diversity of brains and minds is natural, healthy, valuable form of human diversity
3. No ‘normal’ or ‘optimal’ style of brain and human mind
4. Neurodivergence - brains that function in ways that are different from what is typically considered normal
5. Neurotypicality - typically considered normal/healthy brain functioning
6. Neuro Minority - group who share the same divergence
7. Common neuro divergences - 1 in 7 people, most commonly autism, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyslexia

Question 2

why is neurodivergence important

Answer 2

1. Social issue - classification as ‘minority’, minorities face prejudice and discrimination from social majorities
2. Stigma occurs when differences among groups are stereotyped and labelled as unfavourable leading to social exclusion and discrimination for group members
3. Biases - social barriers to inclusions, detrimental to personal and professional wellbeing

Question 3

Early approaches to autism - Leo Kenner

Answer 3

1. First described by Leo Kenner - child psychiatrist, reported 11 cases of children with unusual symptoms - kenner syndrome
2. “The fundamental disorder is the children’s inability to relate themselves in the ordinary way to people and situations from the beginning of life”
3. Infantile autism <3years - usually low functioning, impaired intelligence

Question 4

Early approaches to autism - Hans Asperger

Answer 4

1. Similar cases, 4 children
2. Came to similar conclusions
3. “The fundamental disorder of autistic individuals is the limitation of their social relationships”
4. Asperger autism - milder form of autism, usually high functioning

Question 5

Early approaches - commonalities

Answer 5

1. General consensus is that both Kenner and Asperger define autism in relation to social interaction, communication and imagination
2. Wing and Gould - examine presence of autism, found that in a large group of children there were difficulties with social interaction, communication and imagination (triad of impairments)
3. Bettleheim - environmental aspects, ‘emotionless’ parenting causes autism (refrigerator mother), disproved and unfounded but had a high impact on parenting
4. Cognitive revolution - focus on perception, memory and language, motivated Baron-Cohen’s experiments

Question 6

DSM-V

Answer 6

1. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction - deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviours used for social interaction, deficits in developing, maintaining and understanding relationships
2. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities - stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, uses of objects or speech, insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus, hyper or hypo reactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in sensory aspects of the environment

Question 7

Background - Baron-Cohen

Answer 7

1. Born in London
2. Lecturer at UCL

Question 8

Background - theory of mind

Answer 8

The ability to attribute mental states to others which allows us to think about why people do the things that they do - helps to predict behaviour

Question 9

Background - Frith

Answer 9

1. Children develop theory of mind at around 2 years
2. Theory of mind associated with pretend play
3. Autistic children - reduced capacity for pretend play

Question 10

Background - Wimmer and Perner

Answer 10

1. Paradigm for TOM used with young children (4 years)
2. Child’s own belief is different from someone else’s belief
3. Child has to be aware that other people can have different beliefs about a situation - capacity to conceive mental states

Question 11

The study - participants

Answer 11

Participants
1. 20 autistic children, 6-16 years old
2. 34 children with Down’s syndrome, 6-17 years old
3. 27 typically developing children, 3-6 years old
Procedure:
1. All participants did the sally anne task
2. This was followed up with a false belief question (diagnostic, where will sally look for the marble)
3. Reality question (control, where is the marble really)
4. And memory question (control, where was the marble in the beginning)
Findings:
1. Memory and reality questions - all children, correct responses
2. False belief question - down syndrome and control gave similar results, 80% autistic children failed, pointed to where the marble really was
Conclusions:
1. Selective impairment in TOM - independent of general intelligence
2. Children with ASD do not understand that their belief and Sally’s belief will be different, inability to represent mental states in others
3. One of the first cognitive accounts of ASD, mindblindness hypothesis - autistic persons have difficulty in starting up a dedicated neurocognitive mechanisms responsible for theory of mind

Question 12

Debate and controversy - TOM does not provide full account

Answer 12

1. only focuses on social features of autism, doesn’t emphasise restricted repertoire of interests, insistence of sameness or peaks of abilities
2. Two additional cognitive accounts:
   Executive dysfunction hypothesis (Ozonoff, Pennington & Rogers) - difficulty in planning how to achieve goals, tendency to become fixated on one activity or object, stereotypes including repetitive actions and motor activities
   Weak central coherence (Frith and Happe) - difficulty combining several pieces of information to form an overall understanding of the issues, provides account for peaks and abilities, detail-focused rather than holistic processing
3. Alternative account - monotropism - views mind as an interest system, we are all interested in many things and our interests help direct our attention, different interests are salient at different times, monotropic mind means fewer interests tend to be aroused at any time and attract more processing resources

Question 13

Debate and controversy - TOM deficits not specific to autism

Answer 13

1. TOM deficits are also found in schizophrenia, unipolar and bipolar depression, conduct disorders, right-hemisphere damage
2. This criticism and criticism one are problematic if assuming a single explanation for autism, multiple characteristics associated with autism, variations from person to person, cannot look for one full explanation

Question 14

Debate and controversy - TOM deficits not universal to autism

Answer 14

1. Not all autistic children failed the sally-anne task
2. Development of more sophisticated Sally-Anne tasks e.g. second order false belief tasks (participant has to represent what someone thinks of what another person thinks), no children with autism passed this test
3. Young autistic adults did succeed in this test, 2 hypotheses were developed in response:
   Autistic individuals show delays in development of TOM - Happe did a meta analysis of 13 false belief studies, neurotypical children pass FBTs at 3.62 years, children with ASD pass at 5.5 years
   Surface level performance should be distinguished from actual competence - possibility that autistic individuals who pass TOM tests use different cognitive strategies, need more advanced tests to distinguish between performance and competence, suggests autistic individuals universally perform worse on TOM

Question 15

Debate and controversy - other criticisms

Answer 15

1. Problems with interpretations of FBTs - typically developing children pass, interpretation is that they have TOM, autistic children pass, interpretation is there needs to be a better test
2. Milton’s double empathy problem: Crompton and Fletcher-Watson found that both autistic and neurotypical people benefit from having an interaction partner with the same diagnostic status when performing an information transfer task
3. Autistic people share information with other autistic people as effectively as non-autistic people do
4. Information sharing breaks down when pairs are mis-matched from different neurotype

Question 16

Alternative explanations

Answer 16

1. TOM deficit could be explained by social orientation hypothesis
2. Can social cognition deficits be explained by a lack of social orientation?
3. Wang, Lee, Sigman and Dapretto - irony comprehension in ASD - neutral vs explicit language, activity in neural part of the brain associated with irony increased in explicit condition for ASD
4. Sanju, southgate, white and frith - attribution of mental state, spontaneous attribution vs verbal instructions, performance improved with instructions
5. Performance in social tasks may not be determined by what participants are able to do but what they are inclined to do
6. Social orientation - performance can be affected by explicitness of instructions, relevance of social cue to solve the task, intrinsic interest of the stimulus for the participant, primary deficit (disturbance in the motivational and executive processes that prioritise orienting to social stimuli), secondary deficit (Decreased expertise in social cognition and TOM is the result of the primary deficit)
7. Baron-Cohen’s new paper - unreliable across autistic individuals, does not account for all autistic features, found in other conditions, no empirical support

Question 17

Impact and legacy - scientific contributions

Answer 17

1. Impact on developmental psychology
2. Philosophy of mind
3. Pragmatics
4. Cognitive science
5. Deception
6. Imitation
7. Prosocial behaviour
8. Empathising-systemising - newer theory to account for non-social features, ASD best explained using both dimensions in combination, the discrepancy between E and S determines whether you are likely to be autistic
9. New evidence: E-S theory and extreme male brain theories led to the myth that autistic people lack empathy, no empirical evidence for gendered brains

Question 18

Applied contributions

Answer 18

1. Insight into cognitive processes underlying autism
2. Inspired development of ways of looking at autistic children and adults
3. Social acceptance