To provide more support for the cognitive explanation of autism; that autistic adults lack ToM skills
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What was the secondary aim of Baron - Cohen's study?
To investigate whether females would be better than males at a ToM test
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What is Theory of Mind?
The ability to understand and predict what others think and feel (Develops from 12-18 months to the age of 4)
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What is mind blindness?
The inability to predict what others are thinking and feeling
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What were the independant and dependant variables of the experiment?
IV: Autistic; Normal (Control); Tourette DV: Performance on advanced test of ToM (eyes task)
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What was the methodology and design of the experiment?
Quasi experiment; Matched pairs design
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Autistic sample:
16 Autistic participants of normal intelligence (13 males, 3 females) recruited from clinical sources and via advert in magazine
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Normal (Control) sample:
50 age-matched adults assumed to be of normal intelligence (25 male, 25 female) drawn randomly from general population of Cambridge
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Tourette sample:
10 (8 males, 2 females), age-matched with autism group from referral centre in London they were attending
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Procedure:
Eyes task, Happe's 'strange stories' task and two control tasks presented in random order to subjects individually in a quiet room in their own home, the researchers' clinic or a laboratory at the university
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Why was Happe's 'strange stories' task used?
To test for concurrent validity
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What were the two control tasks?
Gender recognition task; Emotion recognition task
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Two findings of the experiment:
Adults with ASD had lower mean scores than adults with Tourettes and normal adults on ToM tasks; All participants scored equally well on two control tasks
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Do females have a more advanced ToM?
In normal group, females did significantly better than males in eyes task
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Conclusions:
Core deficit involved in autism is lack of ToM; poor scores were not a result of a developmental neuropsychiatric disability as those with Tourettes were unimpaired
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Why was Eyes task valid?
Target words were not just emotional states, but also cognitive mental states; results of Eyes Task mirrored results of 'strange stories' task; results of Eyes Task didn't mirror results of control tasks
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Other cards in this set
Card 2
Front
What was the secondary aim of Baron - Cohen's study?
Back
To investigate whether females would be better than males at a ToM test
Card 3
Front
What is Theory of Mind?
Back
Card 4
Front
What is mind blindness?
Back
Card 5
Front
What were the independant and dependant variables of the experiment?
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