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COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Autism Core Study: Baron- Cohen et al. (1997)
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Page 1: Baron cohen

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Autism

Core Study: Baron-Cohen et al. (1997)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDMMwG7RrFQ&feature=fvw

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What is Autism?• Profound psychiatric disorder in understanding and coping

with social interaction / communication / imagination.

• Key features are –

• Lack of emotional contact with others

• Muteness or unusual speech

• Insistence on sameness

• Poor pretend play abilities

• Mental retardation

• Repetitive behaviour patterns

• Obsessive interests

• Major learning difficulties

• Resistant to change

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What causes autism?• There is evidence to suggest that some

people have a genetic predisposition towards autism.

• It is also suggested that it is caused by a response to environmental hazards, e.g. during pregnancy, diet, hormones, vaccines (MMR jab).

• Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize

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What age is autism usually discovered?

• Parents usually notice signs in the first 2 to 4 years of their child's life. The signs usually develop gradually, but some autistic children first develop more normally and then regress.

• In 1966: 1 in 2,222• In 1993: 1 in 141• In 2004: 1 in 110

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Autism in the media• Most examples of representations of autistic individuals in the media

focus on autistic savants.

• These are individuals who have an amazing ability. They will show an

extraordinary talent in a particular area. Examples of savant talents

include expert mathematical calculations, playing Beethoven on the

piano after hearing the song for the first time and with no prior

lessons, drawing a detailed map of the streets of London after being

taken on a 30 minute helicopter trip.

• One of the most famous example of an autistic savant is Daniel

Tammet.

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• The ability to understand someone else’s point of view.

• It is the ability to make inferences about what others believe to be the case in a given situation.

• This allows us to predict what others will do.• ToM develops around age 4.• Baron-Cohen argues that this core feature is

lacking with all autistic people.

What is Theory of Mind? (ToM)

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What came before this case study?

The Sally-Anne Test

Baron-Cohen et al. (1985)

Meet Sally and AnneSally puts a ball in the basket and then leaves the roomAnne moves the ball into her boxSally returns… Where will she look for the ball?Where does Anne think Sally will look for the ball?Autistic children will say that Sally will look for the ball

in the basket only… They have no THEORY OF MIND

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjkTQtggLH4.

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Purpose of the Sally-Anne Test

• This was the first major test used to assess ToM.

• RESULTS: Baron-Cohen successfully showed that the majority

of the autistic children used as participants in the study did not

display ToM.

• EVALUATION OF TEST: Useful to test children but not

effective to test the more advanced ToM skills found in adults.

Test designed for 6 year olds.

• This more recent case study that you will be learning for your

exam was developed by Baron-Cohen et al. to test adult ToM to

tell us more about adults with autism.

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Baron-Cohen et al (1997)

CASE STUDY: Another Advanced test of

Theory of Mind(Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, pgs 813-822)

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

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AIM

Baron-Cohen et al. developed the ‘Reading the mind in the Eyes Task’. (Eyes task for short)

Aim is to provide support for the cognitive explanation of autism, specifically that autistic adults lack advanced theory of mind skills; the ability to predict the thoughts or behaviour of another person.

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Hypotheses (what they predict would

happen)1.Adults with autistic spectrum disorders can’t interpret states of mind from ‘reading’ eyes.

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METHOD: ParticipantsThree groups of participants were tested:

Group 1. 16 participants (13 male, 3 female) with autism

or Asperger’s Syndrome all with normal intelligence

(mean IQ was 105) = unconfounded by mental handicap.

Group 2. 50 normal age matched adults. (25 male, 25

female) taken from population of Cambridge. No mental

illnesses. Normal intelligence. Used also to test gender

differences in ToM.

Group 3. 10 adult patients (8m, 2f) with Tourette’s

Syndrome. (similar to autism) Age matched with group 1.

Mean IQ=103.5

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Independent and Dependant variables

• Independent = the thing that doesn’t change over the course of the experiment.

• Dependant = depends on the outcome of the independent variable, expected to change.

• IV = participants used (normal, autistic, Tourette’s Syndrome)

• DV = performance on test

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Method: DesignCollected quantitative data

Quasi- experiment design = independent variable varies

naturally without the need for manipulation by experimenter.

Order effects = order of each task was change regularly for

each participant to reduce effects that might change results, e.

g. tiredness, boredom, getting used to design of experiment.

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METHOD: Procedure

Each group was asked to complete the same 4 tasks.

1. The Eye Task.

•Participants shown 25 different faces with only the eye region visible.

•All photos taken from magazines and turned into black and white.

•All pictures show same region from midway along the nose to above the eyebrow.

•Each picture shown for 3 seconds and the participants asked to select between 2 mental

state terms printed under each picture to suggest what mental state the person was in. For

each photo there was a mental state and its ‘foil’ (opposite)

•Chose terms from 2 mental states. A) Basic = sad, happy. B) Complex = reflective, arrogant

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The Eyes Task

• Lets have a look at a version of the test.

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METHOD: Procedure

2. Strange Stories Task.

•Participants used from group 1 and 3.

•Tested using Happe’s ‘strange stories’ task

•Also used to test ToM and validate the results from The Eyes task.

•Participants asked to read each short story and then answer 2 questions, all similar for each story.

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METHOD: Procedure

3. Control Tasks – used to ensure results from eyes task came from no other factors

A) Gender recognition of eyes task

•Participants shown same eyes from the first task. Asked to identify whether they were male or female.

•This was used as it involves face perception, social perception and perceptual discrimination. (main problem autistics face)

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METHOD: Procedure

3 B. Basic Emotion Recognition Task

•Shown photographs of whole faces which displayed the 6 basic emotions (sad, happy, angry, afraid, disgust, and surprise)

•This was used to check if difficulties in the eyes task was from difficulties in recognising emotions.

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RESULTS

ConditionMean score on the Eye Task

Adults with autism or Asperger syndrome

16.3

'Normal' adults 20.3

Adults with Tourette syndrome

20.4

ConditionMean score on the Eye Task

'Normal' males 18.8

'Normal' females 21.8

1) Who performed the worst on the eyes task? Give statistical evidence

2) Who was better at the eyes task? Males or Females?

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RESULTS• Autistic / Asperger’s syndrome group

significantly less able to cope on the eyes task.

• Normal and Torette’s Syndrome participants had very close results.

• Autistic group’s responses on Happe’s strange stories showed significant errors.

• No differences on the control tasks between 3 groups.

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DISCUSSION (discussing the results and why

they might have been that way)

• Adults with autism or AS were impaired on a ToM test even

though they were of normal intelligence.

• Normal population perform better on tests of ToM than males.

• Autism impairment is not due to the following: low intelligence,

any developmental neuropsychiatric disability as TS

participants were unimpaired on the test, due to weak central

coherence (cannot separate themselves from reality – given no

context in eyes task, e.g. Sally has just fallen over, how would

she feel?)

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CONCLUSION

• Even though participants with autism and AS had a normal or above average IQ they performed poorly on both ToM tasks.

• Lack of ToM is a core deficit involved in autism.

• Females have greater ToM skills than males. Baron-Cohen suggests this reflects differences in rate of development and superiority in language skills.

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Evaluating the study

• Evaluating a core study is just as important as understanding the study itself. You WILL be tested on this in the exam so it’s important you develop your skills of being able to suggest the

STRENGTHS and WEAKNESSES of a study.

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EVALUATION: Research Method

Strengths: method was experimental which allows for ‘cause and effect’ to be established.

Quasi experiment = experimenter did not have to manipulate or control anything as subjects were naturally in the 3 categories.

Order effects = order of each task was change regularly for each participant to reduce effects that might change results, e. g. tiredness, boredom, getting used to design of experiment.

Validated the Eyes Task through the use of the strange stories task.

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• Weaknesses: a lab experiment. This might have made autistic

participants feel disorientated by their surroundings and induced

stress. This could have affected performance.

• The Eyes Task is a very advanced ToM task. Photographs are

static in a way the real world never is. May have been more

realistic to use film instead of photographs.

• Only asked to study the eyes, In everyday life we gain cues from

the whole face to understand emotion. A characteristic of autism is

to avoid eye contact – puts this group at a disadvantage.

EVALUATION: Research Method

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EVALUATION: Participant sample

• Affects of autism is hugely varied. Therefore difficult to generalise performance for the entire autistic population from using 4 autistic adults and 12 with Asperger’s Syndrome.

• Small numbers used in groups 1 and 3 compared to group 2.

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EVALUATION: Type of data collected.

• This experiment collected quantitative data (numbers / a quantity)

• Using qualitative data (words, texts, speech, pictures, etc.) often gives more in-depth explanations and open ended questions provide reasons for answers given.

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EVALUATION: How useful was the data collection to

wider society • Provides further evidence that a character

of an autistic person is that they lack ToM. • Techniques have been developed in

education for teachers to encourage ToM skills in autistic children.

• Allowed those who are not autistic have a greater understanding of the behaviours of an autistic person.

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Changing the study• If you were going to recreate this study

what 2 changes would you make?• Take into account what the weaknesses

of this study have been and how you could make changes, particularly in the method and participants that would possibly improve the results.

• Say how and why and what (you expect to happen)