What is autism
Autistic spectrum disorder is when a person has difficulties in communication, relationships with others and imagination
What is theory of mind
Theory of mind refers to one’s ability to not only understand that they themselves have their own thoughts and feelings but that other people have a different set of thoughts and feelings
What is the sally anne test
- A method to test for autism for 6 year old children
- A child would witness sally place a marble in her basket but Anne would move the marble into her box when Anne was no longer there. Children were then asked “Where will sally look for her marble” in relation to whether she would look in the basket or the box
What were the findings from the original Sally Anne test
Only 20% of autistic children would answer correctly and say that sally would look for her marble in the basket compared to the 85% of children who had no condition
What do we learn from the original Sally Anne test
- Shows that those with autism are unable to predict behaviour
- Sally doesn’t know that the marble has been moved therefore children with autism answered that Sally would look in the box because that is where they know the marble is
- They don’t understand the thoughts and feelings of others
- Proof that people with autism lack theory of mind
What are the potential problems of using the Sally Anne test to measure Theory of Mind
The task is not complex enough for adults with autism as they hav a fully functioning Theory of Mind
What is Happe’s Strange Stories Test
- A method to test for Theory of Mind in children aged 8-9
- Children had to listen to a series of ambiguous stories and judge the mental state of the character
What were the findings of the Strange Stories Task
Children with autism struggled to identify the mental states of the charters in the stories
What was the aim of Baron-Cohen’s study
To investigate whether high-functioning adults with autism and Asperger Syndrome would struggle with a new and more difficult test for theory of mind known as the ‘Eyes task’
What was the sample in Group 1
- 16 people
- 13 male and 3 female
- Had high functioning autism or Asperger Syndrome
- They were all of ‘normal’ intelligence
What was the sample in Group 2
- 50 people
- Age matched controls
- 25 male and 25 female
- No history of psychiatric disorder
- Presumed to be of ‘normal’ intelligence
What was the sample in Group 3
- 10 people
- 8 male and 2 female
- Had Tourette’s syndrome
- Age matched with groups 1 and 2
- They were all of normal intelligence
What was the sampling method for Group 1
- Volunteer sampling
- Recruited using an advertisement in the National Autistic Society magazine
What was the sampling method for Group 2
- Random sampling
- Selected randomly from a participant list drawn from the general population (excluding members of the university)
What was the sampling method of Group 3
- Opportunity sampling
- Recruited from a referral from a referral centre in London which they were attending
Why was a Tourette’s group used in this study
- Tourette’s is similar to autism in that both are childhood psychiatric disorders believed to be associated with abnormalities in the frontal region of the brain
- Comparing tourettes group with the autistic group would allow Baron-Cohen to see whether an impaired theory of mind in unique to those with autism or people with similar psyhiatric disorders such as Tourette’s
What was the research method used in Baron-Cohen’s study
Quasi experiment
What was the IV
Naturally occurring IV was whether paricipants had autism or Asperger syndrome, were normal, or had been diagnosed with Tourette syndrome
What was the DV
The number of correct answers out o 25 on the Eyes task
What was the experimental design
Independent measures as each participant only experienced one condition
What were the control tasks
- Basic emotion recognition task
- Gender recognition task
What was the basic emotion recognition task
P’s were shown black and white images of whole faces and asked to identify which of the six basic emotions were displayed (happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgust and surprise
What was the purpose the basic emotion recognition task
To check if difficulties on the Eyes Task were due to basic difficulties with emotional recognition
What was the gender recognition task
Participants were asked to identify the gender of the eyes used in the eyes task
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Approaches0
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Core Studies - Background Questions40
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Core Studies - Section B Structures6
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Core Studies - Section C Structures0
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Core Studies - Social Psychology - Milgram’s Study9
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Core studies - Social Psychology - Bocchairo Study19
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Core Studies - Social Psychology - Piliavin’s Study15
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Core studies - Social Psychology - Levine Study21
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Core studies - Biological Psychology - Blakemore and Cooper Study11
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Core studies - Biological Psychology - Maguire study14
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Core studies - Biological Psychology - Sperry study30
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Core studies - Biological Psychology - Casey study25
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Core studies - Cognitive Psychology - Loftus and Palmer Study22
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Core studies - Cognitive Psychology - Grant Study23
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Core Studies - Cognitive Psychology - Moray's Study30
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Core Studies - Cognitive Psychology - Simons And Chabris Study28
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Core Studies - Individual Differences Psychology - Freud’s Study29
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Core Studies - Individual Differences Psychology - Baron-Cohen’s Study36
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Core Studies - Individual Differences Psychology - Gould's Study27
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Core Studies - Individual Differences Psychology - Hancock's Study17
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Core Studies - Developmental Psychology - Bandura’s Study37
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Core Studies - Developmental Psychology - Chaney’s Study26
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Core Sudies - Developmental Psychology - Kohlberg’s Study29
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Core Studies - Developmental Psychology - Lee’s Study26
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Behaviourist Perspective1
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Psychodynamic Perspective1
