baron cohen

background: what is autism

a developmental disorder which affects an individuals ability to communicate and socially interact. it is often though of as a spectrum and the severity and range of difficulties children experience place them within the spectrum

background: what is mind blindness

a severe impairment of understanding mental states and how they govern behaviour, linked to an impaired theory of mind

background: what is theory of mind?

the ability to recognise that others have minds that may be different to our own - for example, the ability to recognise that we all have different thoughts, knowledge and emotions

what is the sally-anne test

a test for children for autism. sally puts her marble in a basket, it is moved to the box by anne, and then sally returns. the child is asked where sally should look to test theory of mind - if they understand that sally and anne have different knowledge to what the child has

what is happe’s strange stories test

stories involving bluffs, sarcasm, figures of speech, jokes, lies, pretending, sarcasm etc in physical and mental state stories. people with autism struggle with these tests

aim of baron cohen

test theory of mind with high-functioning adults with autism or asperger’s syndrome with an adult-appropriate test, the eyes test

sample for group one

experimenter group: 16 volunteers (13 male, 3 female) with high functioning autism or asperger’s recruited from doctors and adverts in the national autistic society magazine

sample for group two

control - 50 (25m, 25f) age matched controls with no psychiatric disorders and average intelligence. randomly selected from the general population of cambridge

sample for group three

control - 10 people (8m, 2f) with tourette’s syndrome age matched with groups 1 and 2 of average intelligence. volunteers from a referral centre in london

strength of the sample in group one and group three

the gender imbalance is representative of autistic individuals and people with tourette’s as males are four times more likely to be diagnosed with these conditions compared to females

strength of the group two and group three control groups

allows comparison to non-autistic individuals as it will show cause and effect that a defective theory of mind is specific to autism and not all developmental disorders like tourette’s

strengths of the matched participants design

matching on age and intelligence reduces individual differences like natural ability - for example, if people were older in the control group then they may be able to recognise emotions more clearly

research method

quasi. IV: the type of person (autistic, tourette’s or medically normal). DV: performance on the eyes task (out of 25) and therefore testing theory of mind

strength of a quasi experiment

makes use of a naturally occurring IV to study abnormal behaviour, so we can study rare cases of behaviour without being unethical by manipulating it - academic knowledge into autism

weakness of a quasi

cannot randomly allocate participants to a group so individual differences may not be controlled. some adults in the autism group may have other factors that affect a participants score on the eyes test, reducing validity

where was the procedure done

participants were tested in a quiet room in a clinic or a cambridge lab, or their own home. three tasks were done in a random order to reduce order effects.

first test of the procedure

the eyes task involved showing participants 25 black and white photographs 10×15cm of the eyes region on males and females. each picture was shown for three seconds. participants had to answer between two words, a forced choice question about the mental state of the person from their eyes. some were basic (sad, happy) and some were complex (reflective of unreflective)

second task of the procedure

the strange stories task was meant to test the validity of the eyes task as a test for theory of mind (concurrent validity). if someone failed the strange stories but passed the eyes test, then the eyes test is not valid. as such, only autistic and tourette’s groups did this task.

third task of the procedure

the third tasks were control tasks to eliminate other factors as a possible reason for their score on the eyes test. gender recognition - participants were asked to identify the gender of the eyes used in the eyes task, this was to control social perception. basic emotion recognition task - participants were shown photos of whole faces and asked to identify the emotion from six basic emotion words to check if difficulties on the eyes task were due to difficulties with basic emotional recognition

key finding on gender

normal females performed significantly better than the normal males on the eyes task (mean of 21.8 vs 18.8) but the normal males were significantly better than the autism/AS adults (18.8 vs 16.3)

key finding on IQ

within the autism/AS group there was no significantly difference between IQ and performance on the eyes task

key finding on strange stories

on happe’s strange stories, no participants with tourette’s made any errors but those with autism/AS were significantly impaired, making many errors

autism/AS mean score on the eyes task (25)

16.3

normal mean score on the eyes task (25)

20.3

TS mean score on the eyes task (25)

20.4

result 1

the mean score for the autism/AS group (16.3) was significantly lower than the tourette’s group (20.4) and normal group (20.3)

conclusion 1

adults with autism/AS posses an impaired theory of mind

result 2

within the autism/AS group, there was no significant correlation between IQ and performance on the eyes task

conclusion 2

theory of mind deficits are independent of general intelligence

strength of the data collected

easy to compare differences between autism/AS/TS/normal - easy to see a deficits of theory of mind - form valid conclusions about autism related deficits

weakness of data collected

lack of insight - scores on the eyes test do not explain why they chose the options they did - don’t have a full picture of why autistic adults struggle with theory of mind

ethics

informed consent, no deception, participants were volunteers - upholds the reputation of psychology

internal validity ?

many controls - 15×10cm pictures in a randomised order - clear cause and effect that the IV (autism) caused the DV (theory of mind deficit)

the control tasks eliminate gender and basic emotional recognition as extraneous variables, and happe’s strange stories bring concurrent validity as it shows that the eyes task measured theory of mind

low internal validity

participants may have been guessing the emotions of the eyes as there was a time limit of 3s, or they may not have understood the task. reduces validity of the procedure as there could be other factors

low ecological validity

2D black and white photos of only the eyes are unrealistic to real life when attempting to distinguish someone’s emotions in real life when they are 3D, have body language and longer to process. cannot be generalised to real life mental state interpretations in autistic adults

reliability ?

high internal and external. procedure is easy to replicate as the same 25 pictures can be used with the 2 options

ethnocentrism?

kind of. autism diagnoses are high in the west compared to other cultures which may be partly due to some symptoms being associated with normal behaviour in other cultures, so a lack of social interaction being considered a problem to be solved is ethnocentric, as well as the suggestion that eyes are the primary ways of interpreting mental state instead of other aspects of a human

practical application

the national autistic society has courses and advice for such things as starting a conversation. for example told to stand an arms length away from someone, face them and say hello. there are also courses to teach children how to communicate with their peers.

additionally, software programmes and resources can be used at home and in the classroom so children can learn different emotions from a young age.