Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A.M., & Frith, U. (1985)
Does the autistic child have a ‘theory of mind’? Cognition, 21, 37-46
Briefly outline the characteristics of AUTISM.
What is meant by having a Theory of Mind (ToM)?
Why do we need a Theory of Mind?
What problems might be encountered by somebody without a theory of mind?
The Study
To investigate whether or not someone can understand the notion that other people have beliefs, you can use tasks that require the participants to attribute a belief state to another person. The task used here is a ‘false belief’ task called the Sally-Anne test.
The researchers used three groups of children in a ‘quasi-experimental’ design. What is meant by this?
Complete the table below with the details of each group.
|
N |
Mean Chronological Age (CA) |
Mean verbal Mental Age (vMA) |
|
|
Autistic |
|||
|
Down’s syndrome |
|||
|
“Normal” |
Why do you think that the researchers used the group of Down’s syndrome children in this study?
Outline (as briefly as you can) the Sally- Anne test.
The children were asked FOUR questions during the test. What were they?
NAMING QUESTION:
BELIEF QUESTION:
REALITY QUESTION:
MEMORY QUESTION:
The results table in the article gives the percentages of children in each group who answered the questions correctly. The naming, reality and memory questions were answered correctly by all the children.
Complete the following table showing the actual number (you have to convert from percentages) of children who answered the Belief question correctly.
|
No of children answering correctly |
Autistic |
Down’s syndrome |
“Normal” |
|
BELIEF QUESTION |
What conclusions can you draw from this?
In the results section, the researchers state that the difference between the autistic children and the other children is ‘statistically significant at the level of p<.001’.
Explain what this means.