welcome back today I'm here with another study from the cognitive approach and this time we're doing Baron Cohan eyes test so to start off just take a look at these images they are three different images this is the first one it's just a set of eyes and there are four options playful comforting irritated and Bor Bo so just spend some time looking at these eyes the first picture and try to identify what emotion you think is being displayed in the eyes so for me I personally believe that this is playful um I don't know if anyone else also went for that option but to me I think this is playful let's look at the second one the options we have are terrified upset arrogant and annoyed so which one do you guys think it is I think this is upset some people could maybe pick annoyed or terrified but for me it's upset and the last one we have um a set of female eyes and the options are joking flustered desire and convinced [Music] and take a few seconds to just focus and try and identify what you think is being shown for me it's desire so you can comment down and just let me know what you guys think but this is essentially what the study is about and if you wish to take this entire test there are 36 such set of eyes um it's available online you can um just search up on Google for um take the baron Kohan I test online and then I think there should be a link on um testing your social intelligence so just click that link and fill in the basic information and then you can start off your test and then let me know what score you guys get in the comments below so what we just saw here were a set of eyes and you had to try and identify the emotion that was um being shown now this study is on people with Autism so there's a good chance many of you might know someone with autism or might have met someone with autism or might have a family member um autism is a disorder where the main symptom is that people with the disorder they lack theory of mind and theory of theory of mind is um a psychological concept that we'll look further into when we talk about the psychology being investigated but in very simple terms let's just say that they have low levels of empathy not sympathy empathy empathy is essentially perceiving things from another person's perspective perceiving things from another person's point of view are you how good are you at understanding someone else's situation by looking at things from or imagining what it would be like to be in someone else's shoes so people with Autism tend to struggle with that and as a result of that they tend to have very poor social and communication skills um we might find them to be socially awkward in public situations and a lot of the behavior that they may display might seem odd to us um so before we get into that let's look at the background of the study so in 1997 Baron Kohan wanted to test this concept of theory of Mind in adults with autism and he decided to come up with um a test called the ice test now if you go further back in 1985 Baron Gohan actually wanted to test um theory of Mind in children with autism and he created this experiment or this task called the Sally and task where children with Down Syndrome Down syndrome is another um disorder and people children with Down Syndrome they were compared to children with autism and the task was basically there were two dolls and we call one doll Sally the other one an and in this task one of the the dolls had a marble the other one did not one doll so the experimenters were obviously controlling the the dolls and they did this little role play where where they said that one doll has placed the marble in her basket and she's left the room in her absence the other doll takes the marble out of her basket and places it in her own box so when the doll returns where will she look for her marble in her own box basket or in the box of the other doll so people the children with autism actually struggle to give the right answer they said that she would look for it in the other dolls box rather than in her own basket and that suggests that they have low theory of Mind low empathy because they were just giving the answer based on what they saw rather than trying to perceive things from the doll's perspective but in 1997 Baron Gohan wanted to test this concept of theory of mind on adults with autism so naturally it wouldn't be the most eological valid experiment if we would use dolls for adults which is why he decided to come up with a different experiment in which she used a questionnaire which we call the eyes test so we call this the 1997 original eyes test and it's basically very similar to what I just showed you in the first slide where there are a set of eyes and the participant has to try and identify um the correct emotion that is being shown in uh the set of eyes and this was compared to a control group of people without autism adults without autism now the problem is that this original 1997 version of the eyes test had a lot of issues it had too many problems which didn't really make it a valid eyes test because everyone was was getting a really high score even the people with Autism they were getting around 24 out of 25 which is a very high score and it's not a very valid measure of their theory of mind now let's take a look at some of the issues with the original ice test and these are very important to remember it's one of um C's C's favorite questions to ask in the exam um on Baron Kohan where they'll give you or they'll ask you what are two issues with the original I test and then in Part B they could ask you how they were overcome or they could give you the issues and they can ask you how it was overcome so try and remember all of them and let's look at the issues first and then we'll talk about how they were overcome later so the first issue is that there were only 25 set of eyes with two options each now this is a problem because imagine your teacher is teaching you a study let's say the baron con study and then they want to take your test and they want to see how well you know the study but your test has 25 questions and they're all true or false questions so you have two options you read the question and the answers are either true or false so it's close-ended you either pick true or you pick false even if you don't know the answer to a question and you haven't studied you can simply guess the answer and there's a 50% chance that you will guess the right answer so this is essentially making the test really easy because people can just you know by chance just guess the right answer and there's 50% chance that they'll end up picking the right answer so two options for 25 set of eyes is not a very good test so it's not a valid measure of their theory of Mind another problem was that the two options so the the one true or false the true or false example is what I was giving but um there were two words or two emotions just like how I showed you there was like playful desire Etc um the ones we we saw the pictures we saw there were four options but in the original Isis there were only two such options another problem was that those two options the two emotions that were given as the options were often um opposite words such as sympathetic and unsympathetic so again making it really easy you're not not sure what the emotion is showing in the picture but you're definitely sure it's not unsympathetic so that only um leaves one other option which is sympathetic so I guess that's the answer so that's probably what people were thinking again making it really easy then there were some eyes some picture of eyes which were displaying complex emotions which were slightly difficult but then there were some which were very basic and very easy to guess and identify furthermore um some of the images some of the eyes were gazing in a certain direction such as up or down which made it very easy to guess the emotion so these first four points you can see is indicating that it's not a very difficult test it's actually a very easy test and because of that a lot of the participants were scoring really high even the autistic participants like I said the many of them got 24 of 25 so this led to something that we call sealing effect effects ceiling effects is so you're sitting in your room like right now just take a look up at the roof you can see the ceiling it's high up ceiling effects is when everyone gets the really high score the highest score or really high score in the task or in a test because it's very easy the opposite of ceiling effects is floor effects which is when a task is so difficult that everyone does poorly so problem with this study problem with this test the original 1997 I test is that everyone was getting a really high score because of the fact that it was very easy another issue is that they were more female eyes than male eyes um so from the 25 majority of the eyes that were shown in the pictures were of females and that is a problem because maybe female eyes are more expressive so easier to guess the emotion and lastly some of the words may not be understood so the options that were there for each picture um the emotions that were given as options what if the participant doesn't understand the meanings of any of those words so in that case they would have no option but to guess the answer so these were the issues that were there with the original ice test now let's discuss how Baron Kohan um Baron Kohan overcame these um issues of the original ice test also um random fact Baron Kohan is the cousin of the famous TV director Sasha Baron Kohan so just some random knowledge for you so in 2001 four years later after the original 1997 I test was created Baron Goan decided to create a revised version in which he overcame the issues of the original I test and he did this with the help of a panel of eight judges who helped with the development of this Revis version so they were basically the new version that was created was tested on this panel of eight judges and there were two criteria that the that these judges had to meet in order for a set of eyes to be um confirmed and be included in the new revised version so what are those two factors of those two criteria that had to be met so when this revised version is being test Ted on these judges there are eight of them a panel of eight judges at least five of the eight judges have to select the same correct Target word so let's say that a set of eyes is being shown so for example they've shown a pair of eyes and there are four options I'm just making it up or let's just take the one that we saw in um the first few slides that I showed you so there was one I think that had the options playful comforting irritated and bored and I said that I think the right answer was playful so let's say that the correct answer is playful now the correct answer or the target word is what we want the judges to select at least five of the eight judges when they're taking this test they need to select the answer playful or if that is the correct answer then they need to select the tar Target word the correct word at least five of the eight if four select let's say playful is the correct answer four select playful um two select comforting one selects bored and one selects irritated we cannot include these set of eyes in the eyes test so the criteria is at least a minimum of five judges have to select the correct Target word that's the first criteria the second criteria is no more than two judges can pick the same foil now foil is incorrect option okay so there are um four uh set of Eyes by now you probably figured because you saw the first um um picture which I showed you the eyes test there were a set of eyes and the four options so you probably figured one of the ways that they overcame the issues of um two options is that they've increased it to four so one is the correct or Target word and there are three incorrect Words which we refer to as foils so five out of eight judges have to select the correct Target word and no more than two can pick the same foil now let's say that one of the incorrect words of the foils is board and three of the judges pick board so five have selected playful but the other three select board so even though the first criteria is met that five have selected the target word the second criteria has not been met because we need a maximum of two to select the same foil but if three people pick board which is a foil then we cannot include that set of eyes in the test because that suggests that there is too much confusion between playful and board which means that particular set of eyes could be either of the two emotions and if the judges are struggling to identify then the participants may also okay because remember that this set of eyes is being tested on the panel of age judges first just to validate it and if it works on them if they meet these two criteria then we can pass the set of eyes and move it on to the final version of the ice test to be tested on the actual participants so if five pick playful one pick's comforting two pick board and one I think that's eight yeah so let's say five pick playful one pick's comforting two Pig board then that particular set of eyes will still be included because at least at least five have picked the target word and no more than two have picked the same foil okay so these are the two criteria that need to be met in order for a set of I to be included in the ice test now let's discuss how the issues were overcome so like I said 25 set of eyes were in the original version this was actually initially increased to 40 but then reduced to 36 so the final version has 30 36 the ones that the participants will take will be will be of 36 set of eyes so maybe the reason there were 40 is because um they initially had 40 but then perhaps there were four set of eyes where the criteria of the judges was not met so they probably remove those four and hence we are left with a final of 36 um set of eyes now the study that we are doing for your syllabus is the revised version so the participants the results that we'll be looking at are the results of the revised 2001 ice test with 36 set ofi not the 1997 set ofi you do not need to know the results of those you do not need to know anything else of the 1997 original I test other than the issues that were there so the main focus is the revised version four options rather than two um one correct with three incorrect or foils okay now I said that the options were often opposite words there are no no longer opposite words so all four words are words that have no link whatsoever completely random words with no um similar meanings or they're no longer opposite words um the basic emotions which were very easy were removed and only difficult complex emotions were um used in the study the images that were gazing in a particular direction which were very easy to guess were deleted um as the 36 set of eyes we had an even number of male and female eyes 18 each um and finally a glossery was also provided so like a dictionary with the meanings of all the words so all the all the options that were there for the set of eyes um they were all presented in a glossery and the meanings were written in front of each word and the participant if they're stuck on a question because they don't understand the meaning of any of the words they can just go open the glossery they can check the meaning and then they can go back and attempt that question so by doing all of these revisions and overcoming the issues it's clearly now a more difficult test it's a more valid test so if you do have a high or low score in the ice test it's not because of guessing the answer it's probably because you are good at judging emotions or not so it's a much more valid version uh when I took the test I actually had a pretty high decent score 30 out of 36 so that suggests that I'm relatively good at judging emotions so like I said you guys can take this test online and let me know what score you guys get now let's talk about the psychology being investigated so when talking about this term theory of mind let's look at the actual definition it's the cognitive ability to understand the needs and emotions of others cognitive means in very simple terms your mental abilities for example your language ability is your memory your concentration your intelligence and in this case your empathy levels your EQ emotional um intelligence your ability to understand someone else's emotions your ability to understand someone else's needs so in this study theory of mind is being tested through the questionnaire by seeing if you're able to um determine someone's emotions just by looking at their eyes so that's the concept being tested and it's being tested on people with autism autism is a disorder where the individual lacks theory of mind and finds it difficult to understand the needs and emotions of others and due to this they lack social and communication skills as I um alluded to earlier so the main aim of the study is the first one is which is we want to test we want to test the revised I test on a group of autistic adults um there are two secondary aims if a question question comes on the aim of the study you should write the first one but the other two are also important they're secondary aims so along with having autistic participants we will also have um some control participants who are basically people without autism and um we will refer to them as normal or non-autistic participants so one of the other aims is to test if there will be if non-autistic females will score higher on the ice test than non-autistic males so overall we're comparing the autistic participants to the non-autistic participants to see who scores better in the ice test but within the controll participants within the non-autistic participants we want to test if females will score better than males and the reason for that is we believe that females are generally better at understanding emotions judging emotions of others than males so that's something we'll be looking at and the third aim is to test for an in diverse correlation between the eyes test and the AQ test now there's another test that will also be taken by the participants with the ice test it's called an AQ test the autism quotient test and we'll look into this when we um get into the procedure but what this is basically saying is if you score high in the ice test you should score low in the AQ test and vice versa so we are expecting a negative correlation between these two tests this is a lab experiment it's being done in a controlled environment um the best definition of this study would be it's a quasi or a quasi experiment which is quasi means half um it's a half experiment you can even call it a natural experiment because a true experiment is one where we can so we know that an experiment is one that has an IV and a DV and a true experiment is one where the IV can be manipulated but a natural experiment is one where the IV is naturally occurring and the reason this is called a quaza experiment is because the IV cannot be manipulated the IV the independent variable is going to be whether you have autism or no now that's not something that can be manipulated which basically means I can't say okay today you're in the autistic group and tomorrow you're in nonautistic group right you either have autism or you don't it's not something that I can control it's not something that I can decide or manipulate it's something that's there naturally um so for that reason because that is the IV we'll call this a quaza experiment but you can also refer to it and treat it as a lab experiment it's also a self-report study because a close-ended questionnaire not a there are two close-ended questionnaires that will be used the I test and the AQ test now I told you that the IV is the autistic condition and the control conditions so there will be a group with autistic participants however we we refer to them as people with as/ HFA Asperger syndrome and um high functioning autism um just for your ease um in very simple terms just people who have um autism or autistic Tendencies and they're diagnosed with autism so we'll call them the ashfa group and there is one group with um these particular particular type of participants and then there are three control groups and the three control groups have participants without autism without ashfa so they are the three normal groups or the three normal participants and the reason we're splitting them into three groups rather than one big control group is because the three groups of non-autistic participants will differ in terms of their age as well as their IQ levels intelligence levels so that's why we have three different control groups the DV is theory of Mind of the participants and this will be measured through the scores in the two tests the ice test and the AQ test naturally it's an independent measures design because it cannot be repeated you can't have you can't be in the autistic group and the control group because it's a naturally occurring IV you can't have autism today and then be nonautistic tomorrow and then have autism again the day after right so it's naturally going to to be an independent measur design it's also a matched pairs design but specifically for group one and group four and they are matched in terms of their IQ levels and we look into this when we discuss the sample what are the tools being used um so I told you that the participants are going to be split in different groups based on their IQ levels um the IQ levels that were measured were done so before the study before the main procedure and the IQ test that was used is called the is called the wesler adult intelligence scale revised IQ test you can just remember it as W AIS s-r IQ test okay they recently asked a question uh what were the tests that were taken other than the ice test by the participants and the answer to that was the AQ test and the IQ test or you can even write the AQ test and the W AIS s d r IQ test it was a two mark question um this is a valid and proven IQ test so it's I think it's available online but you may have to pay for your um for receiving your score but this is one of few uh valid IQ tests that are there for you if you're ever interested in knowing what your intelligence level is um other than that they use the ice test which is set of 36 set of eyes with four options um part participants you know it's either right answer wrong answer you can get a maximum score of 36 out of 36 and a minimum of 0 out of 36 okay the other questionnaire let's talk about the AQ test now the other questionnaire that was used is the AQ test the autism quotient test now if I ask you what an IQ test is you will say it's something that is used to measure your intelligence so the higher your score on the IQ test the higher your intelligence so if I ask you what the AQ test is measuring your answer should be autistic Tendencies it's not measuring you can say it's measuring your autism but that would be incorrect you could say it's measuring your autistic Tendencies um autistic Behavior or autistic tendencies that you may display so if you get a high score in the AQ test you have higher artistic tendencies and the higher your score the more likely chance that you may have autism so the AQ test is a questionnaire that has 50 statements okay the I test has 36 statements sorry not 36 statements 36 set of eyes with one right answer and three wrong answers the AQ test has 50 statements they're not necessarily questions they're statements and for each statement you have a scale a fourpoint scale um it's a Liker scale so it's in terms of statements um and the options you have are slightly agree definitely agree slightly disagree and definitely disagree so there is no right or wrong answer over here it's just based on your own personality on what is applicable to you as a person so I'll give you a very a simple example one of the questions one of the statements on the AQ test is I find social situations easy slightly agree definitely agree slightly disagree definitely disagree and you just have to pick whatever option you think is applicable to you and your personality now based on your responses you either get a point or you don't get a point for a particular statement so someone with autism you've discussed people with Autism have poor social skills poor communication skills may be socially awkward so they may not find social situations easy so for this particular statement I find social situations easy they'll probably select definitely disagree or slightly disagree now if you select disagree for this statement you will get a point if you select agree slightly or definitely agree you will not get a point because then you're not indicating autistic Behavior or or autistic Tendencies so every time you give an answer answer to a statement in the AQ test that is indicating autistic Tendencies indicating autistic behaviors you will get a score so that's how you're scored on the AQ test so the higher the score the more indication of autistic behaviors that is why a high score on the AQ test is an indication of your autistic Tendencies this is the examples of three examples of the eyes of 36 set of eyes that were shown in the I test here's an example of what the AQ test would look like um I prefer to do things with others rather than on my own um people with autistic Tendencies will um perhaps slightly disagree or definitely disagree for this um I prefer to do things the same way over and over again someone with autism would probably pick agree for this um if I try to imagine something I find it very easy to create a picture in my mind again someone with autism might pick disagree for this so you're probably seeing a pattern over here every time you pick an answer that is indicating autistic behavior um you will get a score you will get a point for that particular statement and like I said the higher your score the more likely chance that you have autism so these are just examples of 13 statements there are 50 like this and there is no opt out option there's no neutral or middle point so you either have to agree or disagree and whether you click on slightly agree or definitely agree or it it's still the same point it's not like slightly is 0 five and definitely is one full Mark as long as you're agreeing or disagreeing will be marked accordingly let's move on to the sample now four groups group one okay you should know the names of the groups as well as the numbers because in your exam they can either take the name they can say what what are two features of the as/ HFA group or they can even say what are two features or what are the results of group one or group two or group three they might not even mention um name of the group so you should know both the name and the number of the group so group one is called the ashfa group this has all male participants there 15 of them they're adults and they have asperous syndrome or high functioning autism so this is your autistic group they have a mean age of 29 years and they were all recruited through a UK National autistic Society magazine or a support group so they volunteered and their IQ test was taken and they all had a a certain IQ test and their average score the average of the mean IQ of this group was 115 which is around average maybe I think average intelligence super or above average intelligence around about that um level so this is important because they're letting us know that it's not like these people have low intelligence and the reason why the IQ scores are being taken over here is because Baron Kohan wants to prove that there is no link between theory of mind and intelligence so a person with autism can be extremely intelligent they can have very low intelligence or they can have average intelligence so your ability to judge emotions has nothing to do with your intelligence level and that's something that Baron coh is also trying to show over here with the IQ levels so these guys are I would say relatively smart 115 that's average level intelligence um group two is your adult control group so these are your normal non-artistic participants there are 122 adults they are recruited from public libraries at two cities in the UK Cambridge and exitor uh with an average age of 46 years opportunity sample group three are your students student control group 103 of them 53 male 50 females they're all undergraduates from Cambridge University so they are assumed to have high intelligence and they're around an average of 20 years also opportunity volunteer sample now earlier I said that group one and group four were a matched pairs Design Group four is called your IQ matched control group these are 14 adults males and females who have an average of 28 years and a mean IQ of 116 their IQ level is exactly the same as the IQ level of the autistic participants group one they have group one had an average of 115 these guys have 116 which is the same level so these two groups are matched in terms of their intelligence levels their IQ levels this is why group one and four are a matched pairs design match pairs design is when um you have um two two or more groups that are matched in terms of a certain variable or a certain factor for example in this case intelligence so the two groups are matched in terms of their IQ they're they even matched in terms of age I think the first one was 29 years this is 28 on average and even the number of participants um the first group had 15 this has 14 but the most important Point here is that their IQ level is the same and and so the only difference over here really between them is that these guys are not artistic whereas group one is um rising of participants with ashfa procedure all the participants took the I test and they took this test in a quiet room individually everyone took it one by one at Cambridge um University or at exiter University um so all four groups took the ice test individually groups one three and four took the AQ test group two did not take the AQ test I think it's probably because we already have so many um non-artistic participants that I felt maybe Baron K felt that it's okay if we just got results of the AQ test from two of the control groups no need to do it in all three but yes all four groups did take the um ice test just remember group two did not take the AQ test so group one is taking both tests group three and four are taking both tests group one also took a gender test by the way which means that when the ice test was happening um group one the artistic participants were also asked to try and identify the gender of the person whose eyes were displayed just to see if they could identify whether it's um sort of male eyes or female eyes before they had to go on and judge the emotion okay not a very important point but it's mentioned so in the original article which is why I'm mentioning here as well and like I said each participant is taking the test individually in a quiet room at exitor or Cambridge University so that's pretty much it to the procedure there's not really anything else it's just a test that they're taking two tests the I test and the AQ test individually in a quiet room um controls are that everyone took the same tests on the same scale um they took the same IQ test um I test was rated out of 36 scored out of 36 AQ test was scored out of 50 okay now before we get into the results there's one thing if you understand this you understand the study entirely people with sorry people with high theory of mind okay people who have high theory of mind are the people who are good at judging emotions right so if you have high theory of Mind should you get a high score in the ice test or a low score you should get a high score so high theory of Mind suggests that you should do well in the ice test which means you're good at judging emotion so you should be able to judge the emotion from the set of eyes so you should get a high test in the high score in the I test but at the same time what what type of score should you get in the AQ test high or low the answer is low so high theory of Mind means you should get a high score in the ice test but a low score in the AQ test because if you have theory of mind which means you're good at judging emotions so then you should get a high score in the is test but you probably don't have many autistic Tendencies hence um you should get a low score in the AQ test because theory of mind is low in people with Autism so you should get a low score in the AQ test however if you have low theory of mind and who are the people with low theory of mind the autistic participants the group one so if you have low theory of mind you should get a low score in the I test and a high score in the AQ test okay so just remember these points So based on that logic group one should actually get the lowest score in the ice test because they have low theory of mind and that's exactly what happened group one the ashfa group they scored the lowest in the ice rest as predicted with an average score of 21 out of 36 group two the adult control group had an average of 26 group three the student control group had an average of 28 and group four had had the highest with an average of 30 out of 36 this is interesting because group one and group four as we discussed earlier have the same IQ level and even though they have the same IQ level group one has the lowest score in the ice in the ice test whereas group four has the highest score 30 and 21 this clearly shows you that there is absolutely no link between your ability to J emotions and your intelligence levels so no link between theory of mind and IQ because if there was if intelligence if High Intelligence meant High theory of mind then technically group three should have scored the highest because they were the ones with high intelligence so clear evidence over here that there is no link between um theory of mind and IQ now one of the aims the second aim was to test if normal females would score higher in the I test than normal males and that was seen over here normal females did score better than normal males in the I test the mode overall was 24 out of 36 the most frequently occurring score so most participants across all four groups scored um 24 36 24 36 was the most common scor that was scored by the participants now for the a test so we expected group one the ashfa group to score the lowest in the ice test so as a result we expecting them to score the highest in the AQ test and that's exactly what happened they had an average of 34.4 out of 50 group two like I said did not take the AQ test groups three and four had almost the same score an average of 18.3 out of 50 and 18.9 out of to 50 and so if females are better at judging emotions than males then they should score higher in the ice test but at the same time males should score higher in the AQ test then compared to females and that's something that we saw here as well normal males scored higher in the AQ test than normal females so what we are seeing is everyone who's scoring high in the I test is scoring poorly in the AQ test well I wouldn't say poorly but scoring low in the AQ test and everyone who's scoring high in the AQ test is scoring poorly in the eyes test so clearly we are seeing an inverse correlation a negative correlation where if you score high in one you're scoring low in the other so there was a negative correlation between the ice test and the AP test and it was minus 0.53 the minus sign is indicating that it's a negative correlation 0.53 can be considered an average strength correlation it's almost like saying that there is a a 53% chance that if you score high in the ice test you will score low in the AQ test and vice versa so there is no guarantee that just because you score high in one you'll score low in the other there's a 53% chance that this will be the case and that's actually true because when I took both tests I actually scored high in both I scored 30 out of 36 in the ice test and then I think I got around the same 30 out of 50 in the AQ test so there's no guarantee that you will always get a negative correlation but in this particular study we did see um that this was the case overall so conclusions are that the revised test did replicate the findings of the original is test which is basically that um the autistic participants did not do as well as the normal participants the Revis test did work on the um autistic uh in testing the theory of Mind of comparing it to autistic and um nonautistic part participants normal females are better at judging emotions than males males are more likely to develop autistic Tendencies than females I think I read a stat somewhere that one in every 50 males can develop autism whereas one in every 200 females have um autism I'm not entirely sure if that's correct um some if someone could just verify that check on the internet and let me know but it is definitely more prevalent in males than females and lastly the tests the IQ test sorry not the IQ test the AQ test and the ice test are inversely or negatively correlated now the study does not provide any conclusive evidence about um its supporting nature or nurture but there might be some biological factors some hormonal factors maybe genetic factors that may cause people to develop autism but at the same time there could also be some environmental factors maybe your upbringing is such where your social or communication skills did not develop to the fullest which is why you may develop some autistic Tendencies um and these can also perhaps be worked on over time if you have autism which can you know if someone can if a therapist can help improve your social communication skills perhaps some of your artistic Tendencies May um decrease uh which can help your condition so slight evidence of nurture as well but again no real evidence is being shown in the study that it's supports either of the two in terms of the individual situational debate it's purely individual because um different participants had different scores based on their theory of mind if you have autism if you have ashfa you're likely to score poorly because you have low theory of Mind whereas those who have higher theory of Mind are going to score higher so theory of mind is an individual trait everyone has different um empathy everyone has different ability to judge emotions differently so that's definitely an individual trait which is why it's favoring the individual explanation application is that these two tests the ice test and the AQ test can be used as a diagnostic tool to try and identify um autistic tendencies in people at an early stage so that we may try and treat them early on so that their condition doesn't worsen um so it's something that can be used by researchers by therapists as a diagnostic tool evaluation so naturally being a lab experiment it's um reliability is of strength high levels of controls give any two examples everyone took the same test rated on the same scale makes the procedure standardized easy to replicate for reliability validity is a strength because the original issues were overcome um a panel of eight judges were also used to help develop the ice test um give any examples of the issues that were overcome such as a glossery being provided so reducing the possibility of participants guessing the answer so it's more more valid in terms of um accurately assessing their theory of Mind however one way validity could be low is it was a self-report so wherever self reports are involved um there's always a chance that people may give socially desirable respon responses or they may lie particularly in the AQ test um you may come across some statements and you may not want to show that you are someone who is antisocial or introverted or you may want to depict a different personality compared as opposed to what you really are who you really are so you may answer differently and inaccurately which can lower the validity of your responses um furthermore um it's a questionnaire with static images still images of eyes and in real life we don't judge emotions by looking at pictures of eyes we interact with people we talk to people we look at their body language their expressions and through that we are able to judge emotions a lot better so perhaps this isn't the most valid way of um assessing your theory of mind generalizability can be both a strength and weakness it is a relatively large sample 200 54 participants in total males females people of different ages different areas of the UK different IQ levels but generalizability is only restricted to people of the UK not outside not other cultures where results could be perhaps slightly different and another very important point is the sample size of the autistic participants is not very large it's only 15 and they're all male and they're all adults so children or females with autism are not being represented in the sample so the findings cannot be generalized to a larger population of people with ashfa or even to children or females with the disorder ecological validity is a weakness as I mentioned earlier um mundane realism is low because in everyday life we do not judge emotions through pictures we judge it rather through actual interaction with people ethics can be considered the strength most of the ethical guidelines were maintained there's consent people volunteered they give consent there's no evidence that they were deceived about the purpose of the study they were completely debriefed and they were aware of the purpose of the study confidentiality is maintained because their identities were kept confidential however you can argue that there may be some potential psychological harm or emotional harm particularly for group one the asfa group because the ice test because of their low theory of Mind may have been difficult um or stressful for them so because of that um potential psychological harm may have been caused to them it's an independent measure design because um you are either in the control group or the autistic group so order effects cannot be there as you're only taking um the the test just once you're not taking it more than once so um no chances of practice or fatigue effects and there's match pairs design being used used for group one and group four so ensuring that IQ is not a participant or confounding variable um data is quantitative because there is a self-report being used which is close-ended with rating scale um the two tests are being scored out of 36 and 50 so it's giving us quantitative objective numerical data which can be used to compare results of different groups for example we could compared the results in the I test of group one and the control groups and through that we were able to determine that um the participants with autism have lower theory of Mind weakness is that there was no qualitative data completely close-ended no qualitative data whatsoever so we're just getting objective data we're not really understanding the reasons behind um the ratings or the reasons behind these behaviors or results and lastly it's a self-report because it's a close-ended questionnaire so if a question in the evaluation comes in which you have to talk about self-report you can just mention that it's a close-ended questionnaire which is standardized can be replicated for reliability uh and it's providing objective quantitative data we've already talked about that but weakness um again points we've talked about validity could be low because participants may give untruthful responses and because it's purely close-ended there is a lack of qualitative data so we are done with this we've got one more study left in the cognitive approach which is Andrade um I have created a WhatsApp group uh recently in which I've added a few of you um in which I'll be sharing updates PDF files and um more information about any online classes or sessions that I may be keeping perhaps closer to the exam so anyone who's interested in these updates or notes or PDFs that I'll be sending um you can go to the very first page of this presentation and uh you can check out the email ID or the WhatsApp number that I provided and just email me or message me if you wish to join the group and I can send you the link and of course if you want access to um these notes or anything else any specific requests that you may have you are free to contact me um on my email ID or on my WhatsApp number okay see you guys next time