Baron-Cohen

• The key theme is understanding disorders.
• Background

  Autism is a developmental disorder affecting an individual's ability to communicate and socially interact.
• Background

  Those with Asperger's syndrome show the same characteristics as autism but are of average or above average intelligence. They appear to have good communication skills, though this may not actually be the case.
• Background

  Mind Blindness is a severe impairment in the understanding of mental states and in the appreciation of how mental states govern behaviour. Therefore it is an impaired theory of mind.
• Background

  Theory of mind is the ability to recognise that others have minds and that these may be different to our own (the ability to recognise that we all have different thoughts, knowledge and emotions).
• Background

  The Sally Anne Test is a theory of mind test designed to test for autism in children (age 6).

  Sally puts her marble in a basket and leaves the room. Anne moves this marble to a box. Sally returns and the children are asked where Sally would look for her marble first.
• Background

  Happe's Strange Stories is a theory of mind test for children. It involves answering questions on a selection of stories and the characters within them.

  The stories require participants to judge the mental states or physical states of others. The types of stories compromise of double bluff, figure of speech, joke, lie, pretend, sarcasm and white lie.
• Background

  Baron Cohen built on Happe's research by using an adult appropriate test to assess Theory of Mind competence in high-functioning adults with autism or Asperger's Syndrome.
• Aim

  To test the theory of mind of high functioning adults with autism or Asperger's syndrome with a newly devised adult appropriate test, know as the 'Eyes Test'.
• Aim

  To show that an impaired Theory of Mind is specific to individuals with Autism.
• Sample

  Three groups of participants were tested:

  • Group 1- Experimental: Individuals with high functioning Autism/ Asperger's syndrome
  • Group 2- Control: Individuals with no history of psychiatric disorder
  • Group 3- Control: Individuals with Tourette Syndrome
• Sample

  Group 1- Experimental:

  • 16 people
  • 13 male, 3 female
  • High functioning Autism/ Asperger's syndrome
  • Volunteer sampling (From clinical sources such as doctors, and an advert in the National Autistic Society Magazine).
• Sample

  Males are four times more likely to have autism than females, so the gender imbalance in group 1 is representative.

  This is the same for Tourette syndrome and the gender imbalance in group 3.
• Sample

  Group 2- Control

  • 50 participants
  • 25 male, 25 females
  • Age matched controls
  • No history of psychiatric disorder and presumed to be of normal intelligence
  • Random sampling (participant list drawn from general population of Cambridge- excluding members of University as it was held in the University Department of Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry).
• Sample

  Group 3- Control

  • 10 people
  • 8 male, 2 female
  • Tourette Syndrome
  • Age matched
  • Normal Intelligence
  • Volunteer Sampling (from tertiary referral centre in London)
• Background/ Sample

  Tourette Syndrome is a neurological condition which is characterised by 'tics' (sudden involuntary movements or vocalisations such as swear words).

  These participants were 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.
• Research Method

  It uses a matched participants design, as the control groups were age matched with the experimental group and all participants were considered to be of normal intelligence.
• Research Method

  The study was a quasi/ natural experiment.
• Research Method

  The naturally occurring IV was the type of person (adults with HFA/ AS, normal adults, adults with TS).
• Research Method

  The DV was the performance on the Eyes Task (score out of 25) testing theory of mind.
• Procedure

  All participants were tested individually in a quiet room either in their own home, in the researcher's clinic or in a laboratory at Cambridge University.
• Procedure

  3 tasks were involved within the study. They were presented in a random order to remove order effects (counterbalanced).
• Procedure

  The 3 tasks were:

  • The Eyes Task
  • The Strange Stories Task
  • Control Tasks
• The Eyes Task

  Participants were shown 25 photographs of the eyes region of different males and females.
• The Eyes Task

  The photographs were taken from magazines.
• The Eyes Task

  The photographs were all:

  • Standard 10 x 15 cm
  • Black and white
  • From midway along the nose to just above the eyebrow
• The Eyes Task

  Each picture was shown for 3 seconds.
• The Eyes Task

  Each participant had to answer a forced choice question/ closed question about the mental state of the person whose eyes they were viewing.
• The Eyes Task

  Each picture had two choices of mental states to choose from. Some were basic mental states ( e.g. happy or sad). Others were more complex mental states ( e.g. reflective or unreflective).

  One word was the 'target', whilst the other was its 'foil' (opposite meaning).
• The Strange Stories Task

  This was included to test the validity of the Eyes Task as a test of theory of mind.
• The Strange Stories Task

  Only the autistic and tourettes group did this task.
• Control Tasks

  Participants completed 2 control tasks to eliminate other factors as a possible reason for their score on the Eyes Task. These were:

  1. Gender Recognition of Eyes Task
  2. Basic Emotion Recognition Eyes Task
• Control Tasks

  Gender Recognition Eyes Task: Participants were asked to identify the gender of the eyes used in the Eyes Task. This controlled for face perception, perceptual discrimination and social perception.
• Control Tasks

  Basic Emotion Recognition Task: Participants were shown photos of whole faces and asked to identify which of Ekman's six basic emotion were being displayed (Happy, Sad, Angry, Afraid, Disgust and Surprise). This checked if difficulties in the Eyes Task were due to difficulties with basic emotion recognition.
• Results

  • The mean score for adults with tourettes was 20.4. This was not significantly different to normal adults (20.3). However, both of these scores were significantly higher than the autism/ AS mean score of 16.3.
• Results

  • Normal females performed significantly better than normal males on the eyes task (21.8 vs 18.8).
  • Normal males were still significantly better than the autism/ AS group (18.8 vs 16.3).
• Results

  • The autism/ AS group made significantly more errors on the Strange Stories than either of the control groups.
• Results

  • There were no differences between groups on the gender and emotion control tasks.
• Results

  • Within the autism/ AS group, there was no significant correlation between IQ and performance on the Eyes Task (theory of mind and intelligence are completely separate).
• Results

  • On Happe's strange stories, no participants with Tourettes made any errors, but those with autism/ AS were significantly impaired, making many errors. (The Eyes Test has concurrent validity)