individual differences Flashcards

Question

whats the sample in baron-cohens study?

Answer 1

. 16 adults with autism spectrum disorder, 4 with high-functioning autism and 12 with Asperger Syndrome, 13 males and 3 females. Recruited through an advert in the National Autistic magazine and a variety of clinical sources. 2. 50 ‘normal’ adults, 25 male and 25 female, drawn from the general population of Cambridge (excluding members of the university). They were randomly selected from the subject panel held in the university department. There was no history of mental illness. 3. 10 adults with Tourette Syndrome. There were 8 males and 2 females. Recruited from a tertiary referral centre in London. Included participants with Tourette Syndrome to ensure difficulties in the eyes task was due to autism not any organic, childhood onset psychiatric disorder

Answer 2

Participants were tested individually in a quiet room either in their own home, in the researchers’ clinic or in the researchers’ laboratory at Cambridge University. * Each participant completed the Eyes Task, Strange Stories task & two control tasks (the gender recognition task & the basic emotion recognition task) presented in random order (to avoid order effects).

Answer 3

Magazine photos - 15cm X 10cm * All standardised * Black and White * Midway along nose to above eyebrow. Shown the picture for 3 seconds and then given a forced choice between two mental states. One was a target mental state (the right answer) and one was a foil (the wrong answer).

Answer 4

In order to make sure the ‘eyes test’ was valid (really measuring ToM) the task was validated using Happe’s strange stories. The strange stories required the participant to read a series of stories and answer some questions about mental states, which measured ToM. The results of this task are given in a separate report by Jolliffe (1997).

Answer 5

- gender recognition task - basic emotion recognition task

Answer 6

the same eyes were used but participants were required to recognise gender. The task controlled for face perception, perceptual discrimination and social perception.

Answer 7

participants are required to judge the emotion of the whole face displaying basic emotions identified by Ekman (1992). Six faces were used – happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgusted and surprised. The task was done to check whether difficulties on the Eyes Task were due to difficulties with basic emotional recognition.

Answer 8

the mean score for adults with autism/AS was significantly lower (16.3) compared to the Tourette Syndrome group (20.4) and normal adults (20.3). * The autism/AS group made significantly more errors on the Strange Stories task than either of the other groups (validating the Eyes Test). * Within the autism/AS group there was no significant correlation between IQ and scores on the Eyes Task. * On the two control tasks there were no differences between the groups. * Normal females performed significantly better than normal males on the Eyes Task (mean 21.8 versus 18.8).

Answer 9

* Adults with autism/AS have an impaired theory of mind (a lack of TOM seems to be a core deficit of autism). * The researchers justify the ToM explanation for the poor performance of the autistic/AS group in the following ways: 1. It could not be due to low IQ (all had normal to high) and 2. It could not be due to brain deficit (Tourette’s group scored similar to the normal group). * The researchers claim the eyes task is a valid measure of ToM because: target words ARE mental state terms, the results mirrored the performance on Happes strange stories task, which is another test of advanced ToM (concurrent validity) and poor performance on eyes task was NOT mirrored on the two control tasks. * They also concluded that within the ‘normal’ population, females have more advanced ToM than males.

Answer 10

the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. It is not a static state, it is dynamic in that it continually adapts itself to new environmental stimuli (Piaget, 1960).

Answer 11

review article, in which Gould reviews the history of Yerkes’ intelligence testing of recruits for the US army in WW1. The article is an edited extract from Gould’s (1981) book, ‘The Mismeasure of Man’.

Answer 12

1.75 million army recruits in the USA during WW1. The recruits included White Americans, ‘Negroes’ and European immigrants.

Answer 13

designed for literate recruits It consisted of eight parts. These included; analogies, number sequences etc. It required a good basic understanding of English language skills and literacy. Although the tests were considered by Yerkes to measure ‘native intellectual ability’ (intelligence that is not influenced by education and/or culture), they were in fact extremely culturally biased. Someone who was unfamiliar with American culture would struggle to achieve a high score.

Answer 14

a pictorial test designed for people who were illiterate, or failed the Army Alpha Test. It had seven parts and consisted of picture completion tasks. The pictures culturally biased and would have been extremely difficult to complete if participants had no knowledge of American culture. There were also maze tests, counting the number of cubes, finding the next in a series of symbols and translating numerals into symbols. The instructions were written (in English), in three of the seven parts the answers had to be given in writing, yet this was a test for people who were illiterate.

Answer 15

If recruits failed on the other two tests, they were supposed to be given an individual spoken examination, this however rarely happened.

Answer 16

Every individual was given a Grade from A+ to E- e.g. C- indicated a low average intelligence, suitable for the position of ordinary private in the army; D indicated a person rarely suited for tasks requiring special skill, forethought, resourcefulness or sustained alertness.

Answer 17

Recruits who were illiterate should have been assigned to the Beta Test, but this only happened in some camps. Meaning illiterate often sat the Alpha Test and came out with an extremely low score. - Men who failed the Alpha Test were often not allowed to sit the Beta test. - Only one fifth of those who failed the Beta Test were allowed to take the individual examinations. - There was not a consistent standard for men to sit the Alpha Test: In some camps, the minimum level of schooling was sufficient to warrant sitting the Alpha test, whereas in others the recruits had to achieve a certain grade. Often, when queues for the Beta test built up, men were allocated to the Alpha test instead.

Answer 18

The data was analysed by E.G. Boring, Yerkes’ lieutenant, who manipulated the results. Selected data was converted to a common standard to look for racial and national averages. The following three ‘FACTS’ emerged: 1. The average mental age of white, American, adult males stood just above the edge of moronity at 13. This indicated that the country was ‘a nation of morons’ and was taken by the eugenicists to show that the poor, Negroes and feeble-minded had been interbreeding and lowering the overall intelligence of the population. 2. The data also showed that European immigrants could be graded by their country of origin with the darker people of Southern Europe and people from Eastern Europe being less intelligent than the fair people of Western and Northern Europe. (Russia: 11.3, Italy:11.0, Poland:10.7). 3. The black man had an average mental age of 10.41. However, the lighter the skin, the higher the score.

Answer 19

Gould concluded that IQ tests are culturally and historically biased and they DO NOT measure innate intelligence. It is also concluded that IQ testing is often unreliable, and IQ tests may not produce valid results. Finally, it can be concluded that inappropriate, poorly administered IQ tests can lead to tragic consequences.

Answer 20

: Psychopaths have specific combinations of cognitive, social and emotional characteristics that differentiate them from the general population (Hare, 2003, 2006). Psychopathy is defined as a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behaviour, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical (selfish) traits. Hare (2006) suggests that psychopaths comprise about 1% of the population.

Answer 21

1. Superficial charm 11. Sexual promiscuity 2. Very high estimation of self 12. Early behaviour problems 3. Need for stimulation 13. Lack of realistic long-term goals 4. Pathological lying 14. Impulsivity 5. Cunning and manipulative 15. Irresponsibility 6. Lack of remorse or guilt 16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions 7. Shallow affect (lack of emotion) 17. Many short-term marital relationships 8. Callousness and lack of empathy 18. Juvenile delinquency 9. Parasitic lifestyle 19. Revocation of conditional release 10. Poor behavioural controls 20. Criminal versatility

Answer 22

to examine whether the language of psychopaths reflected, as predicted, an instrumental/predatory world view, unique socioemotional needs and a poverty of affect (lack of emotion).

Answer 23

Their instrumental nature – they view the world, and other people, as theirs for the taking, demonstrating a selfish, goal-driven nature. Consequently, would psychopaths use more subordinating conjunctions i.e. ‘because’, ‘since’, ‘as’, ‘so that’ which are associated with cause and effect statements? (ii) Their unique material and socioemotional needs – focus on basic needs (sex, food, shelter) rather than high level needs (relationships, spirituality, self-esteem), based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Often have an inflated sense of self-worth/self-importance. Consequently, would psychopaths mention basic needs more than higher level needs, when describing their crimes? (iii) Their emotional deficit – they have difficulty interpreting and experiencing emotion. This suggests that psychopaths would have difficulty in elaborating on deeper meaning/emotional material. Consequently, would psychopaths: - Produce fewer/less intense emotional words - Produce more disfluencies (‘uh’, ‘um’) - Use language that reflects increased psychological ‘distancing’ (i.e. talking in past tense, denying responsibility)

Answer 24

Semi-structed interview (it could also be considered a quasi experiment).

Answer 25

52 male murders (14 psychopathic, 38 non-psychopathic) incarcerated in Canadian correctional facilities who admitted their crime and volunteered for the study. 8 convictions were for first-degree murder, 32 of convictions were for second-degree murder and 10 of convictions were for manslaughter. There were no differences between the type of crime (manslaughter, second-degree murder, first-degree murder) and psychopathy versus control (non-psychopathy). Mean age at the time of their current homicide was 28.9 years. The two groups did not differ in age or the amount of time since the homicide was committed.

Answer 26

Psychopathy was measured using Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Psychopathy is assessed using an interview, characterised by 20 criteria scored from 0 – 2 for a maximum score of 40. The clinical diagnostic cut-off for psychopathy is scores of 30 or above. - The PCL–R assessments were either conducted by trained prison psychologists or a trained researcher (inter rater reliability was checked). - Using a cut-off score of 25, 14 offenders were classified as psychopathic and 38 as non-psychopathic.

Answer 27

At the beginning of the interview, the purpose of the study and the procedure was verbally explained. Participants were then interviewed. This study used semi-structured/open-ended interviews. Whilst being audio-taped, participants were asked to describe their homicide offences in as much detail as possible. Each participant was encouraged to provide as much information about the crime as possible from the beginning to the end, omitting no details. Participants were prompted to provide to do this using a standardised procedure known as the Step-Wise Interview technique. The interviewers were two senior psychology graduate students and one research assistant, all of whom were blind to the psychopathy scores of the offenders. Interviews lasted about 25 minutes. The narratives were subsequently transcribed (typed up) and then checked to ensure spelling errors were corrected. All ‘uh’ and ‘um’ statements were included.

Answer 28

The transcripts were analysed through content analysis using two types of analysis software (W-matrix and DAL). Content analysis is the analysis of written/spoken data. It allows qualitative data to be analysed in a quantitative manner. 1. The corpus analysis programme W-matrix, which was used to compare parts of speech and to analyse semantic concepts contained in the psychopath and control group’s speech. 2. The Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL) software programme was used to examine the affective tone (emotionality) of the words.

Answer 29

Number of words used: The 14 psychopath narratives contained 29,562 words (average: 2,202 per participant). The 38 control narratives contained 97,814 words (average 2,554 per participant). There was no significant difference in the average number of words produced by psychopaths and controls. 1. Instrumental language analysis: As predicted, psychopaths produced more subordinating conjunctions than controls (because, since, so that). 2. Socioemotional needs analysis: - As predicted, psychopaths used approximately twice as many words related to basic physiological needs, including eating, drinking and money when describing their murders than controls. - As predicted, controls used significantly more language related to higher level needs, including family and religion than psychopaths. 3. Emotional deficit analysis: - The degree to which the psychopaths had physiologically distanced themselves/were simply detached from their homicide was examined through the use of the past and present verbs and the rate of articles (An article is a word used to modify a noun, such as ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘an’). - Psychopaths used more past tense verbs than controls e.g. stabbed. - Psychopaths used fewer present tense verbs than controls e.g. stab. - Psychopaths produced a higher rate of articles than controls, revealing that their language involved more concrete nouns. Psychopathic language was significantly less fluent than controls. Psychopaths used 33% more disfluencies (‘uh’, ‘um’) than the non-psychopaths. Initially, no significant differences in the emotional content of language between the two groups in terms of pleasantness, intensity or imagery were found. However further analysis showed psychopathy to be associated with less positive and less emotionally intense language.

Answer 30

-Psychopaths are more likely than non-psychopaths to describe cause and effect relationships when describing their murder. They are more likely to view their crime as a logical outcome of a plan than non-psychopaths. -Psychopaths focus more on basic physiological needs than higher level social needs than non-psychopaths (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). -Psychopaths will linguistically frame their homicide as more in the past and in more psychologically distant terms than non-psychopaths. -Psychopaths give less emotionally intense descriptions of their crimes and use less emotionally pleasant language than non-psychopaths. -Psychopathic language is substantially more disfluent than that of non-psychopaths.

individual differences Flashcards

(55 cards)