Baron-Cohen

• Autism - is a life-long developmental disorder usually characterised by a triad of impairments
• Sally-Anne teat (first order) -> 4-5 aged children develop ability to pass
• First order - figuring out what someone is thinking
• Ice-cream test (second order) -> normal children can pass at 6
• Second order - figuring out what someone is thinking about someone else
• Theory of mind - ability to see the world from another persons perspective/point of view
• Baron Cohen - Cognitive core study 1997, the study tested :

  Adults with autism or AS, despite being normal or above average IQ, would nevertheless be impaired on a subtle theory of mind test

  Females would do significantly better than males
• Ceiling effect - only have to be as good as a child of 5-6 can appear to pass these tests
• Aim - To develop theory of mind test for high functioning adults with autism, the 'Eyes Task'
• Background - Autism is a triad of impairements in social interaction, imagination and language. Studies found autism of AS who could pass second-order tests of theory of mind (Sally-Anne test). Baron-Cohen argued for a ceiling effect as these tests were designed for 6 year olds.
• Procedure - Group 1 - 16 (13m and 13f), normal IQ, high cuntioning autistic adults self selected by advert in National Autistic magazine and doctor referral

  Group 2 - 50 (25m and 25f) age-matched normal controls randomly from volunteer list held by Cambridge university

  Group 3 - 10 (8m and 2f) normal IQ, Tourette's syndrome, age matched other groups, recruited from referral centre in London.

  Tests given in random order individually at home, university lab or clinic.
• Eyes Test - Had to give the correct mental state from a choice of 2 based on the eyes alone.

  Results - (mean) - Autistic 16.3 , Tourette's 20.4 , normal 20.3. 'normal' males lower score than females
• Gender recognition task - Used the same eyes as the eyes test but had to identify gender. It was a control task to check for deficits in face perception.

  Results - No differences between the three groups.
• Basic emotion recognition task - Had to judge 6 whole face emotions - happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgusted, surprised. It was a control task to check for deficits in basic human emotion recognition.

  Results - No differences between the three groups.
• Conclusion - The 'Eyes Test' is a valid theory of mind test for high functioning autistic adults
• Strange stories - Given written scenarios and had to explain reason for behaviour. Autistic people tend to give the wrong explanation as they don't understand mental states. Used as an additional test for validity.

  Results - Tourettes 100% while autistic and AS participants made errors.