Evaluation

• Evaluation

  • + Research support
  • -An incomplete explanation
  • + Real-world application
  • -Ineffectiveness of TOM interventions
• + Research support

  • Researchers looked into how people with ASD understand the thoughts and feelings of others
  • Baron-Cohen et al (2001) used the eyes task. They had 15 adults with ASD + 239 others without ASD. The ASD group performed worse on the task, showing they struggled to understand emotions from the sound of someone's voice
  • Both studies support the idea that having a TOM deficit is a common thing in people with ASD. These tests don't rely heavily on language skills like some other tests do
• -An incomplete explanation

  • Tager-Flusberg (2007) points out how the TOM explanation falls short when it comes to explaining the non-social stuff, like repetitive behaviours + intense interests. TOM cannot explain why some people with ASD have really good attention skills either, which is a cognitive strength
• -An incomplete explanation 2:

  • Frith and Happe (1994) found 20% of kids passed Baron-Cohen et als original belief test + some adults did well on the more sensitive eyes + voice tests we talked about earlier
  • TOM alone cannot cover everything about ASD, so the explanations isn't completely valid
• + Real-world applications

  • Psychologists + educators have come up with different ways to help people better understand others thoughts + feelings
  • For example, "social stress" intervention by Carol Gray
  • These are short stories that show social cues + different perspectives in everyday situations
  • A helpful way to develop creative techniques to improve the social behaviour issues that can be tough for people with ASD
• -Ineffectiveness of TOM interventions

  • Just because a theory can be used to create real-world situations + solutions, doesn't mean they automatically work. They need to be tested.
  • Fletcher-Watson et al (2014) did a review of real-world interventions based on TOM idea for ASD. They looked at 22 trials where they split people with ASD into two groups: One getting TOM intervention and the others not
  • Found evidence that ToM can be improved through interventions but the improvements didn't last long + skills didn't apply to situations beyond where they were learned
• -Ineffectiveness of TOM interventions 2

  • The problem = many of the interventions studies weren't done very well, so it's hard to draw solid conclusions. The researchers couldn't fully rely on their findings because of this + it shows the urgent needs for better-quality test of TOM interventions
  • So the TOM explanation for ASD doesn't have strong evidence to support it when it comes to predicting intervention outcomes