Experimentation Critique

Experimentation Critique
Student
RES/320
Date
Instructor
University of Phoenix

Experimentation Critique

Abstract
Autism has been researched for the past 100 years or so. The advancements in science and
methodologies have provided researchers with resources to study the condition. Eugen Bleuler
used the term autism to describe self-withdrawn patients in 1908. Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner
were the pioneers in autism investigation in the 1940s. Asperger described very able children
while Kanner described children who were severely affected(Mandal, 2013). This paper is a
critique of the experiment conducted by Simon Baron-Cohen to determine the difficulties
employing a theory of mind.

Experimentation Critique

Experimentation Critique

The Case
The research experiment selected to analyze and critique in this paper is (Another
advanced test of theory of mind: evidence from very high functioning adults with autism or
Asperger syndrome). The author Simon Baron-Cohen is a Psychologist known for his work on
the autism spectrum and how (according to his theory) involves mindblindness or dela in the
development of the theory of mind (TOM). He is also known for his latest works related to his
theory that the spectrum is an extreme form of the male brain or sex differences in empathy.

The autism spectrum is diagnosed when certain symptoms are identified in a person.
Social interaction difficulties, verbal and non-verbal communication difficulties, lack of
imaginative play, lack of planning skills, repetitive movements or speech are between the most
commonly used characteristics used by psychologists. Asperger syndrome is a type of autism that
presents a higher social functioning than people with autism. People with Asperger have less
problems with communication and no difficulties with their learning abilities and most times are
of average and above average intelligence.

Cohen conducted this research to evidence how adults with Asperger or autistism had
difficulties employing a theory of mind. Prior research conducted by Baron-Cohen demonstrated
that children with autism had problems completing first and second order tests, while later
research had proved that adults with the syndrome could pass those tests. Further studies
concluded that adults with autism and asperger syndrome had difficulties with the strange stories
task that are designed to understand if participants can understand other peoples mental state,
identifying if someone is angry, worried, or feeling bad according to facial expressions.

Experimentation Critique

The author designed a new test because the first and second order tests were designed for
children, and called it the eyes task or reading the mind in the eyes task. What Cohen tries to
demonstrate is if adults with asperger syndrome or autism have problems mind reading which
according to psychologists is related to the ability to employ a theory of mind.

The experiment

When Baron-Cohen conducted research with children with autism by providing them
with the first order test of Sally and Anne. Four years old children without autism passed it
without problems when they identified the theory of mind used in the test. However four years
old children with autism could not interpret the actions presented in the test. Adults with autism
have passed the same test. Cohen argues that this test was designed for children and it only
proves that adults with autism have the ability to employ a theory of mind that a normal four
years old would in the same case.

Second order tests have also been passed by adults with autism or high functioning
autism. These tests would measure the abilities of reasoning about what a person would think of
another person. However these tests were designed for six years old normal children and they
only prove that adults with autism have the abilities of employing a theory of mind that a normal
six years old would.

Experimentation Critique

Francesca Happe designed the strange stories test in 1994, which involved story
comprehension. In this test the key is to concern a characters mental state or physical events.
The most important element of the test was sarcasm, which is difficult to interpret by people with
autism. It was found that both adults with autism or Asperger syndrome had more difficulty with
the mental state task than normal control participants (Baron-Cohen,1997).

What Cohen intents to prove that adults with autism could not pass the strange stories
task because of their deficiencies of their theory of mind. He states that his eyes task test is the
same as theory of mind in essence. He wanted to see if autistic adults could infer a persons
mental state just by looking at photos of the persons eyes. It would be useful to find out if
females would do better than males in this task.

Procedure

The method used is a natural or quasi experiment, which means analyzing the conditions
that occur naturally. The independent variable is the type of participants which include people
with high functioning autism, normal adults, and participants with Tourette syndrome.

The participants were grouped as follows:

Group 1- sixteen participants with high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome.

13 men and 3 women, recruited by advert in the National autistic Society
magazine and clinics.

Experimentation Critique

Group 2- 50 age matched controls. 25 men and 25 women with no history of

psychiatric disorder and apparently normal, selected randomly from a subject
panel.

Group 3- participants with Tourette syndrome with normal intelligence, recruited

from a referral centre in London. Eight men and two women that mirrored the sex
ratio of group one.

Groups one and three had been tested and passed the first and second order false beliefs
task. This means that a failure to pass the eyes task would attributed to mind reading problems
beyond of those that six years old normal children could present. Researches expected to see
more difficult in group one to pass the eyes task. The Eyes Task, the Strange Stories Task, and
the two control tasks were presented in random order, to all participants and they were tested
individually in a quiet room either in their own home, in a researcher?s clinic, or at a lab at the
University (Baron-Cohen, 1997).

To make sure that participants were not having difficulties due to other factors, researcher
used two control tasks to group one, gender recognition task and basic emotion recognition task.
Gender recognition task involved identifying the genre of the person in each photograph. Basic
emotion recognition task involved identifying the basic emotions of faces that included: happy,
sad, angry, afraid, disgusted, and surprised.

Results

Experimentation Critique

Group one had more difficulties than group two and group three in the eyes task, as
expected. The score were as follows:

Group 1 16.3

Group 2 20.3

Group 3 20.4

This experiment also helped finding answers to the question: Do men have more
difficulties with the eyes task than women. Normal males 18.8 and normal women 21.8. Group
one showed difficulties with the strange stories task while group three passed this test with no
problems. The control tasks were passed by the three groups equally.

References

Baron-Cohen, S., Jollife, T., Mortimore, C. & Robertson, M. (1997) Another advanced test of
theory of mind: evidence from very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger

Experimentation Critique
syndrome.
Mandal, A. (2013). Autism History. Retrieved on 7/8/2013 from http://www.newsmedical.net/health/Autism-History.aspx