Adults with autism or aspergers will be impaired on theory of mind test.
Within the normal population, females will do better on the theory of mind test compared to males.
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Method
Quasi experiment using independent-measures design and self-report measures.
IV = whether participant had autism or not
DV = correct response on 'eyes task'
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Sample
Group one - 16 high-functioning autistic people (self-selected)
Group two - 30 'normal' people (randomly selected)
Group three - 10 people with tourette's syndrome (from referral centre)
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Procedure
Each participant was tested on 4 tasks - eye task, strange stories task, gender recognition and basic emotion recognition (Ekman).
Participants were tested in a quiet room either in the researcher's clinic, their own home or a lab at Cambridge University.
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Results
Performance on eyes task (by condition / mean score out of 25)
autistic / 16.3
normal / 20.3
tourettes / 20.4
Performance on eyes task (by gender / mean score out of 25)
normal male / 18.8
normal female / 21/8
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Conclusion
Adults with autism had poorer performance on a subtle theory of mind test, which was not due to low intelligence or having a neuropsychiatric disability.
Clinically 'normal' females performed better on the eyes task that clinically 'normal' males. Evidence for mpathising-systemising bias?
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