baron cohen

what is autism?

a developmental disorder affecting an individual’s ability to communicate and socially interact

what is theory of mind?

the ability to recognise that others have minds that are different to our own

background of study

sally anne test

what is the sally anne test?

sally puts her marble in the basket and leaves the room. anne moves the marble to the box. sally comes back. children are asked where the marble is and what sally and anne both think

what are the two theory of mind tests?

• sally anne test

• happe’s strange stories test

what is happes strange stories task?

answering questions on a selection of stories and characters, ppts have to judge the mental states or physical states of others. consists of lies, jokes, sarcasm etc.

what did happe find?

adults with autism had difficulty with the experimental condition compared to matched controls, showing adults w autism had impaired ToM

how did baron cohen improve this test?

using an adult appropriate test

aim of study

to test the theory of mind in high functioning adults with autism or aspergers syndrome using the eyes test

how many groups were tested?

3

what was the experimental sample?

16 people with high functioning autism or aspergers syndrome recruited from clinical sources e.g. doctors. all volunteered

who were the two control groups?

• 50 age matched controls with no history of a psychiatric disorder, selected randomly from population of cambridge

• 10 people with tourettes syndrome also aged matched, from referral centres in london. volunteered

why were ppts with tourettes used?

used as a control group to see if the deficit in theory of mind was the same in all neurological conditions or if it was specific to autism

experimental design?

matched participants - age matched

research method?

quasi experiment - naturally occurring IV of having autism or not

where were participants tested?

tested individually in a quiet room either in their home or in a lab at cambridge university

how many tasks did participants complete?

3

what were the three tasks?

• the eyes task

• strange stories task

• control tasks

how were the tasks presented to ppts?

in a random order to remove order effects

how many photos were the participants shown?

25

where were the photos taken from?

magazines

what did the photos consist of?

the eyes region of males and females, standard size 10×15cm, all black and white

how long was each photo shown for?

3 seconds

what did participants have to answer?

a forced choice question about the mental state of the person whose eyes they were viewing, some basic some complex. one was the target word and the other was its foil

how many choices did the participants have?

2

why was the strange stories task used?

to test the validity of the eyes task as a test of ToM

who did the strange stories task?

only the autistic and tourettes group

what were the two control tasks?

1. gender recognition of eyes task

2. basic emotion recognition task - shown photos of whole faces asked to identify emotion

why were these control tasks used?

1. gender - to control for face perception and social perception

2. emotion - to check if difficulties were due to difficulties in basic emotional recognition

difference in mean scores?

normal adults - 20.3

autism group - 16.3

results for strange stories task?

autism group made significantly more errors than the other groups

conclusions?

• adults with autism possess an impaired theory of mind

• theory of mind deficits are independent of general intelligence

• theory deficit is specific to those with autism