Psychology - Core Studies - Baren-Cohen et al (1997)

what is autism spectrum disorder?

autistic individuals struggle with the Triad of Impairments - communication, social interaction and imagination,

what are the 6 basic emotions?

anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise, fear - other emotions are a combination of these 6

what was the Sally-Anne test?

dolls: Sally has a ball that she puts in a basket, Anne has a box → Sally leaves the room and Anne hides Sally’s ball in her box,

all children could identifies each doll and object, 85% of CN and 86% of Down’s Syndrome participants could say where Sally would look for the ball when returning but only 20% of autistic children could,

title?

“Another advanced test of Theory of Mind: Evidence from very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger’s Syndrome”

aim?

• to investigate if those with autism or Asperger’s would have an impaired Theory of Mind,

• to show that females are better at reading emotions than males,

design?

quasi - independent groups (ASD, CN, Tourettes)

method?

Lab Experiment

participants?

ASD:

• 16 ‘v high functioning’ adults with autism or Asperger’s Syndrome,

• 4 were high functioning and 12 had Asperger’s,

• 13M + 3F (representative of the population stats at time),

CN:

• 50,

• 25M +25F,

• age-matched to experimental group,

Tourettes:

• 10,

• 8M + 2F,

sampling?

ASD: some opportunity from one of the researcher’s clinics, some by self-select, responding to an advert in the autism society magazine,

CN: self-select from an advert in the Cambridge newspaper,

Tourettes: opportunity from Robertson’s (researcher) clinic,

procedure?

all did 4 tests individually:

1. Basic Emotions - picture of whole face, identify the emotion from a choice of 2, covered all 6 of the basic emotions - which emotion it represented was decided by 8 independent raters,

2. Gender Recognition Task - had to say whether the face (used the same as eyes test) was male or female,

3. Eyes Test - 25 black and white photos from eyebrows to base of nose, 15×10cm, presented for 3s, choice of 2 emotions but more complex than basic,

4. Happe Strange Stories Task - mentalistic or physical stories, mentalistic included Pretend, Joke, White lie, Figure of Speech, Irony, Misunderstanding, Forgetting etc, physical included Army, Glasses etc,

results?

Basic Emotion and Gender Recognition - no significant differences between groups,

Eyes Task - ASD = 16.3/25, CN = 20.3/25, Tourettes = 20.4/25 - Males = 18.8/25, Females = 21.8/25

Strange stories - ASD had significantly more errors than CN who made few and Tourettes who made none,

conclusions?

• autistic individuals have more difficulty with Theory of Mind and understanding other’s mental states,

• females are better at interpreting emotions than males,

• those with Tourettes didn’t have more difficulty with Theory of Mind than those who were clinically normal,

validity?

Face → females were shown to answer more questions correctly on the eyes test than men, aligning with aims,

Construct → faces used in the ‘basic emotion’ test were judged to unanimously represent an emotion by 8 (4M, 4F) raters, variation in stories used for storage stories task,

Concurrent → strange stories and eyes test both showed as independent measures that those with ASD have an impaired Theory of Mind,

Ecological → strange stories represented true-to-life situations and what the likely response of a participant would be, less so with eyes test as you can often see the majority of the face,

Temporal → other tests have shown lower theory of mind, used to help develop autistic diagnostic tests, Jolliffee, 1997, further analysed results,

reliability?

internal → those with ASD scored lower on both the eyes and strange stories test,

external → those with ASD also had difficulties with Theory of Mind on the Sally-Anne test,

usefulness?

further research into triad of impairments surrounding ASD,

applications to better understanding how people with ASD think leading to better communication and accessibility accommodations for those with ASD, development of autistic diagnostic tests,