Baron-Cohen

What was the background?

Looked at autism which involves difficulties in 3 areas: social communication, social interaction and social imagination. It is a childhood-onset disorder and is generally described as a spectrum disorder, the combination of difficulties experienced can vary between different people with autism. Baron-Cohen was interested whether there was any ‘core-deficit’ that was common to all people with autism, and he had established trough the Sally-Anne test in the 1980s that ‘Theory of Mind’ (the ability ti recognise what another person is thinking or feeling) is an area that children with autism typically show a weakness in.

What was the aim?

To investigate whether adults with autism still experience a deficit in Theory of Mind and to develop a new ‘advanced’ way of testing Theory of Mind that would be appropriate for adults (and not be vulnerable to a ceiling effect)

What was the sample?

• 16 adults with either autism or Asperger’s syndrome aged 18-49 (13m, 3f), recruited via an advert in the National Autistic Society’s Communication magazine or professional contacts of Baron-Cohen.

• 50 ‘normal’ adults (25m,25f), recruited from the general population of Cambridge, UK, aged 18-48.

• 10 adults with Tourette’s syndrome aged 18-47 (8m,2f), recruited from a referral centre in London (this is an additional control group as Tourette’s is similar to autism but is unconnected with any deficits in general intelligence.

Summarise the procedure.

• Participants took the ‘Reading the Mind in the eyes task’, which involved them being shown 25 pairs of eyes (in black and white shown for 3 seconds) and they had to say which of two semantically opposite words/phrases best described what the person was thinking or feeling.

• The ‘Eyed Task’ was the new test of Theory of Mind Baron-Cohen was developing for use with adults.

• To confirm it correctly measured theory of mind participants also did the ‘strange stories’ task which was already a validated test of theory of mind (there was risk of it having ceiling effect with adults since it was developed for 8-9 year olds).

• The autistic participants were also asked (1) to identify the gender of the people in the photos used in the Eyes Task, and (2) to recognise the six basic emotions from photos of whole faces. If they’d failed either task then they would not have been given the eyes task to do.

What were the findings/conclusions?

• Adults wit autism did worse in the eyes task (mean score of 16.3/25) than either the ‘normal’ adults (20.3/25) or the adults with Tourette’s syndrome (20.4/25).

• Suggested (1) deficit in Theory of Mind persists into adulthood for people with autism and (2) the eyes task is a test that can pick this up (results on this test were concurrently valid to those on the strange stories task).

• Within the ‘normal’ participants, females performed better than males on the eyes task (mean score of 21.8/25 vs 18.8/25).

Evaluate reliability.

Internal

• Very standardised with lots of controls such as 3 seconds for eyes shown, black and white for all images, same opposite words etc. so replicable and good to show consistent effect

External

• Overall large sample (76) but autism group only 16 so not large enough to not be distorted by outsiders and only 10 adults with Tourette’s syndrome.

Evaluate validity.

Construct

• Used multiple tasks to accurately measure theory of mind and confirm it worked

• Found an improved way to test for theory of mind- eyed task

Ecological

• Would be usual to look at expressions of people and interpreting emotions daily

• BUT not being flashed expressions on a screen for 3 seconds + being given multiple other tasks and getting scored

Population

• Looks at autistic, ‘normal’, Tourette’s gripe snd bough genders

• Large age range

• BUT don’t look at those younger than 18 and older than 49

• Done in 1990s in UK so likely all white

Concurrent

• Directly compared the eyes task results with strange stories task results which was already validated as a test for theory of mind and found similar results

Evaluate ethnocentrism.

• All recruited in the UK

• BUT Baron-Cohen argues theory of mind is a universal cognitive ability

Evaluate ethics.

Upheld

• Protection from harm

• Informed consent

• Right to withdraw

Broken

• Possible psychological harm (may of felt frustrated, embarrassed etc if struggled with tasks)

• Lack of full debrief

Which debates link to this study?

Nature-Nurture

• Nature- can’t develop autism, it’s a lifelong disorder you’re born with

Freewill-Determinism

• Determinism- don’t have a choice on their reaction time, because if their disorder, it’s affected