Baron-Cohen et. al

Aim: To provide more support for the cognitive explanation of Autism in that they lack Theory Of Mind

Participants:

• Group 1 Autism and Asperger - 16 participants, 13 male, 3 female
• Group 2 "normal" control group - 50 participants, 25 male, 25 female
• Group 3 Tourette's syndrome - 10 participants, 8 male, 2 female

Method:

• Quasi Experiment,
• Eyes task - 25 standardised black and white photos of eyes,
• asked which word describes what the person is thinking or feeling
• CONTROL TASKS - Gender recognition and Basic Emotion Recognition
• Strange stories used to test concurrent validity of the eyes task

Results:

• Autism group got the lowest score of 16/25 on the eyes task
• Females perforemed significantly better in the eyes task than men 21/25 vs. 18/25

Conclusions:

• A lack of Theory of Mind is a cognitive defecit which explains why Autistics performed badly on the eyes task
• Females performed better there may be sex differences in the rate of development of theory of mind in early childhood and that this may be the cause of female superiority in language development and male superiority in spatial skills.