Baron-Cohen

• Autism Spectrum Disorder

  Difficulties in: communication; Imagination; and Relationships with others
• Lack of Theory of Mind (ToM)


  An impairment previously linked to ASD in which individuals struggle to perceive thoughts and feelings that differ to their own
• Sally-Anne Test


  Children watch 2 dolls, one places a marble in a basket and then moves away while the marble is moved, when asked where the doll will check, children with ASD would fail to perceive that the doll would not know the marble had been moved
• Happè's Strange Stories Test


  8-9 yo children with ASD are told short stories with ambiguous endings and they struggled more when asked what the character was thinking compared to what the character was doing 
• What inspired Baron-Cohen?

  They were inspired to devise more age-appropriate tests for Theory of Mind for adults living with ASD
• Baron-Cohen's aim

  To investigate whether adults with Asperger's would struggle with the 'Eyes Task'; a new test for theory of mind
• Baron-Cohen's sample :

  • ASD group
  • Control group
  • Tourettes Syndrome group
• Baron-Cohen's ASD group

  Volunteer sample - 16 people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (13 male ; 3 female)
• Baron-Cohen's control group

  Random sample - 50 neurotypical people
• Baron-Cohen's Tourettes Syndrome group

  Opportunity sample - 10 people with Tourettes Syndrome (8 male ; 2 female)
• Why did Baron-Cohen sample people with Tourettes Syndrome?

  TS has similarities to ASD; both are childhood psychiatric disorders and are both believed to be associated with abnormalities in the frontal regions of the brain
• How was Baron-Cohen's ASD group sampled?

  They were recruited through the National Autistic Society magazine aswell as being recruited through doctors
• How was Baron-Cohen's control group sampled?

  Randomly selected from a participant list drawn from the general population of Cambridge (excluding members of the University)
• How was Baron-Cohen's Tourettes Syndrome group sampled?

  Recruited from a referral centre in London which they were attending
• What was the naturally occurring independent variable in Baron-Cohen's study?


  • Whether the participants had: ASD/TS/No disorder
• Procedure of Baron-Cohen's study

  1. ASD and TS groups completed the Sally-Anne Test to confirm they could complete more difficult ToM tests

  2. All participants tested in a quiet room in controlled lab setting at Cambridge University

  3. Completed the 4 tasks in a random order
• Task 1: Eyes Task (Main Task)


  All participants shown the same set of 25 photos of eyes and tasked with identifying the face's emotion from 2 options
• Control for Eyes Task

  • Prior to the test, decisions about the correct choices were devised by a panel of 4 judges and further confirmed by a panel of 8 independent raters
• Task 2: Adapted Happè's Strange Stories Task


  ASD and TS groups completed a more adult Happè's Strange Stories test to test for concurrent validity with the 'Eyes Task'
• Control Tasksin Baron-Cohen's study

  • Basic Emotion Recognition Task (Used full faces to test if difficulties on the 'Eyes Task' were due to basic difficulties with emotional recognition or not)
  • Gender Recognition Task (Used the same photos of eyes as the 'Eyes Task' to test if difficulties were due to difficulties with this area of the face)
• Mean scores on the 'Eyes Task'

  • ASD: 16.3
  • Neurotypical: 20.3
  • TS: 20.4
• Results on the adapted Happè's Strange Stories Task indicated significant impairment for the ASD group only (TS group was 100% accurate)
• In Baron-Cohen's control tasks, no significant differences were found in either task
• Conclusions of Baron-Cohen's study

  • The study supports the idea that adults with ASD lack a well-developed ToM due to the impairments indicated in the ‘Eyes Task'
  • The lack of a well-developed ToM is specific to ASD and is not seen in similar disorders (TS)