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The behaviours, thinking styles, and social characteristics of someone with autism differ from neurotypical people. Research has attempted to establish the fundamental aspects of these behaviours in autism and how they are expressed, from biological to psychological theories. Here, we will discuss the psychological theories of autism.
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Sign up for freeDo individuals with autism have impaired theory of mind?
What does ToM stand for?
What is the name of the test that the theory of mind is tested with?
What is the name of the test that executive dysfunction is tested with?
What was the name of the test that weak central coherence is tested with?
What was the name of the test that the empathising-systemising theory relied on?
Problems with ToM lead to other issues like ___.
Do people with ASD perform better than healthy individuals in the embedded figures test?
Is the following statement true or false: Executive functions are the mental capabilities needed to complete tasks, shift between tasks, and think of new things.
Is the following statement right or wrong: Understanding false beliefs is a developmental setback?
Craig and Baron-Cohen (1999) tested the creativity of participants in three studies. What was their conclusion?
Do individuals with autism have impaired theory of mind?
What does ToM stand for?
What is the name of the test that the theory of mind is tested with?
What is the name of the test that executive dysfunction is tested with?
What was the name of the test that weak central coherence is tested with?
What was the name of the test that the empathising-systemising theory relied on?
Problems with ToM lead to other issues like ___.
Do people with ASD perform better than healthy individuals in the embedded figures test?
Is the following statement true or false: Executive functions are the mental capabilities needed to complete tasks, shift between tasks, and think of new things.
Is the following statement right or wrong: Understanding false beliefs is a developmental setback?
Craig and Baron-Cohen (1999) tested the creativity of participants in three studies. What was their conclusion?
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Team Theories of Autism Teachers
Psychological theories and models for autism explain the underlying psychological processes of autism, including:
Baron-Cohen et al. (2001) revised and improved the ‘reading the mind in the eyes’ test with autistic adults, where they’d see a picture of someone’s eyes and have to say what emotion the person was feeling.
Autistic adults had more difficulty and had more incorrect answers than control participants. Therefore, Baron-Cohen the empathising-systemising theory which suggests that autistic people have problems empathising.
Empathising is recognising or understanding other people’s emotions and reacting appropriately.
This problem leads to difficulties in making friends and interacting.
People with autism also tend to be drawn to things with rules and systems, e.g. math, physics, and technology, i.e. systemising (Baron-Cohen, 2009). Therefore, autistic people have a ‘low empathising/high systemising’ profile (compared to medium levels of both for neurotypicals).
Finally, some theories and models for autism aim to explain why people with autism tend to understand language literally and struggle to detect complex language such as sarcasm. Happé (1994) investigated how autistic people interpret non-literal speech by having them read a story containing irony and then asking questions about it.
Ann’s mother gives her dinner, but Ann doesn’t say thank you or even look away from the TV. Ann’s mother says, ‘Well, that’s very nice. That’s what I call politeness!’ They were asked:
While autistic people could detect it wasn’t true, they couldn’t state why she could have been saying it, e.g., to joke around or teach Ann a lesson.
There are three main cognitive theories of autism:
Executive dysfunction
Weak central coherence
Theory of mind
The first explains the social characteristics of autism, while the latter two describe the non-social characteristics of autism.
Demetriou et al. (2017) conducted a meta-analysis of executive dysfunction. Their results suggested that the non-social characteristics were due to executive function problems, establishing that those with autism spectrum disorder had a broad executive dysfunction issue that is mostly stable they develop.
Executive function is the mental capacity to organise thoughts and actions to meet goals. It is the cognitive process we use to control our behaviours.
Executive functions include the mental capabilities needed to complete and shift between tasks and think of new things. One of the main tests of executive function that autistic people have difficulty with is the Tower of Hanoi Test.
Craig and Baron-Cohen (1999) tested the creativity of their participants in three studies using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). Participants came up with ideas, but the neurotypical child’s ideas included a greater and richer range of suggestions.
The initial state of the Tower of Hanoi.
The expected final state of the Tower of Hanoi.
The weak central coherence cognitive theory of autism says that autistic individuals fail to engage in cognitive gestalt. In other words, they process the information on a local level rather than a global level.
For instance, if confronted with many buildings centralised in one area of a map, a person engaged in global processing would understand it was a city.
However, a person engaged in local processing would see a lot of buildings and not understand the overall concept.
The WCC is evidenced by the embedded figures test in which the participant must find a simple shape embedded in a larger picture of irrelevant scene images. Autistic children would be shown this image and have to answer: ‘can you pick out a shape within the figure that matches the small triangle exactly?’
People with ASD find this shape quicker than neurotypical people, focusing on the details rather than the whole picture, i.e. local processing. Weak central coherence can explain the narrow focus on specific interests and the adherence to familiar routines. This may not matter to a neurotypical person but can cause extreme anxiety in an autistic person.
Local processing in autistic people could cause issues with tasks that a neurotypical person would have no problem with, e.g., combining separate sentences to form a coherent story.
However, local processing in autistic people could also cause them to have advantages over neurotypicals too by helping them perform some tasks better, e.g. picking out defects in items on a production line in a factory.
Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith (1983) investigated the reason why autistic children and adults often:
Misunderstand social situations;
They cannot put themselves in other people’s shoes;
Are unaware others have different feelings, thoughts, knowledge, and beliefs from them.
Understanding false beliefs is vital to understanding others’ thoughts and beliefs; this is often referred to as the theory of mind (ToM)
Theory of mind (ToM) is about perceiving other people’s mental states, beliefs, intentions, feelings, etc.
Autistic people have difficulties with ToM, which is often linked to them thinking literally, leading to difficulties understanding non-literal speech, e.g. sarcasm or irony.
To determine if a person has autism, clinicians may conduct a theory of mind autism test. These tests are often based on a series of studies by Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith (1983) called the Sally-Anne False Belief Task.
The Sally-Anne False Belief task checks if children with autism can understand false beliefs. Neurotypically developed children aged 4–5 can primarily identify that Sally has a false belief about where the marble is.
In this task, two theoretical children, Sally and Anne, are said to be in a room. Sally has a basket, and Anne has a box. Before leaving the room, Sally places a marble into her basket and covers it with a blanket.
Anne then takes the marble out of the basket, covers it back up, and places the item in her box. Sally returns, and the children have to answer the belief question: ‘Where will Sally look for her marble?’
The correct response is that Sally will look in the basket since it’s where she thinks the marble is. She won’t look in the box (i.e. the place where it actually is) because she wasn’t there when Anne changed the location. Sally’s belief does not correlate with reality, and understanding this is a core aspect of the theory of mind.
People with autism, however, are likely not to complete the task correctly. For instance, they may not recognise that Sally has a false belief about the location of the marble.
There are no particular ethical problems with ToM research because informed consent was obtained from the parents of the child participants (since they cannot give full informed consent themselves). In addition, participants and their parents had the right to terminate the study at any time.
No materials or methods that could cause psychological or physical harm were used in the study, so they were protected from this.
Their identities were kept confidential, they were interviewed, and there was no deception about any part of the study.
Concerns have been raised that all children with autism were lumped together in the conclusions of the findings. Recent research on ToM and ASD (autism spectrum disorder) children shows that some autistic children do quite well in the ToM category.
It is neither fair nor accurate to conclude that ASD children have no concept of ToM but that it exists on a spectrum.
There are several social theories of autism that researchers and psychologists have uncovered. So far, we’ve discussed the cognitive aspects of the theory of mind. However, often considered a social-cognitive theory, ToM can also be considered one of several social theories of autism and the social motivation theory of autism.
A key component in ToM as a social learning theory of autism is the mirror neuron system.
The Mirror neuron system (MNS) is a group of specialised neurons that can mirror actions that others perform.
Social learning is when knowledge or behaviours are transferred from one person to another through observation and imitation. The MNS is activated when we generate a behavioural response to actions and gestures we observe. When activated, it helps us learn about others’ emotions and behaviours.
Researchers have found that the MNS in individuals with autism is not activated as frequently as in neurotypical individuals.
This theory offers another social explanation for why individuals with ASD struggle to understand another’s perspective.
The social motivation theory is a more outdated theory that suggests individuals of the autism spectrum find social stimuli, such as conversing with others, less rewarding than neurotypical people.
Therefore, individuals with ASD are less likely to engage and seek social stimuli.
fMRI research investigating brain regions associated with reward processing has shown mixed results; therefore, the theory’s reliability and validity is often questioned.
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Do individuals with autism have impaired theory of mind in psychology?
Yes. The Sally-Anne false belief task tested autistic children on this ability. Baron-Cohen et al. (1985) found that 85% of the neurotypical children had correct responses and 80% of the Down Syndrome children, but only 20% of the autistic children got it right.
What are the psychological theories of autism?
There are three main cognitive theories of autism theory of mind, executive dysfunction and the weak central coherence theory.
What are models for autism?
There are three main cognitive theories of autism:
How is the theory of mind autism test performed?
Theory of mind (ToM) was originally tested using the Sally-Anne false belief task. It includes pictures and text and shows the participant two girls, Sally and Anne, one with a basket and one with a box. Sally puts her marble in her basket and closes it, and leaves. Then Anne takes it, puts it in her box, and closes it. Sally comes back to play with it.
The participants then had to answer, ‘where will Sally look for her marble?’
Which test is used to test executive dysfunction in people diagnosed with ASD?
The tower of Hanoi autism test.
What does psychology do for autism?
Psychological research has attempted to establish the fundamental aspects of these behaviours in autism and how they are expressed, from biological to psychological theories.
Psychological explanations of autism explain the underlying psychological processes of autism in terms of characteristic behaviours and thinking styles. There are three main theories, two of which focus on either social characteristics or non-social characteristics. A third model has attempted to bring social and non-social characteristics together in a single framework.
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