A Biostatistican's Critique on the original ASQ Study
Page 1 of 1 [ 11 posts ]
03 Nov 2011, 6:56 am
As most of you have probably already heard, there was a study that was conducted that involved the Autism Spectrum Quotient test about a decade ago by a guy that sounds like he is the brother of that guy who played Borat. This is coming from a potential biostatistician. I have found at least a few major flaws with that study. They are listed as follows:
1. Regardless of the degree of autistic/NT answer to each multiple choice question, you
score either no points or 1 point for that question depending upon which answer for
that question is the autistic one. It should be so that the more autistic sounding an
answer for the question is, the more points they score for that question.
[Suggestion: I will explain this later.]
2. According to the original article based on this study that was published, it states that
Group 2 consisted of randomly selected controls. They don't clearly define whether or
not this group was entirely neurotypical or that none of the people in this group were
diagnosed with a mental disorder. [Suggestion: I will explain this later.]
3. The sample size in the population for this study is not exactly representative of the
population. The ratio of the so-called controls to AS/HFA subjects is 3 to 1 (ummm....
no more than 1% of the population is diagnosed somewhere on the autism spectrum).
[Suggestion: I will explain this later.]
What do you think of this criticism so far?
If there are any other criticisms about this study that I haven't already mentioned, feel free to state so. Thanks 
.
03 Nov 2011, 8:02 am
Dear Potential Biostatistician
I am unconvinced by your critique of Baron Cohen's methodology. (Incidentally, he is the cousin of the actor who created the character Borat.)
As you are a potential biostastician, can you please post your qualifications and list of publications so that readers of this forum can compare your qualifications to Baron Cohen's and therefore make an informed decision about who is better equipped to design a large-scale mixed methods study?
I have taken the liberty of copying some information from BC's page in Wikipedia.
Quote:
Baron-Cohen completed an MA in Human Sciences at New College, Oxford, and an MPhil in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. He did his PhD in Psychology at University College London under the supervision of Uta Frith.
Selected publications
Books
Baron-Cohen's single authored books:
Baron-Cohen, S (1995) Mindblindness: an essay on autism and theory of mind. MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Baron-Cohen, S (2003) The Essential Difference: men, women and the extreme male brain. Penguin/Basic Books. ISBN 978-0713996715
Baron-Cohen, S (2008) Autism and Asperger Syndrome: The Facts. OUP.
Baron-Cohen, S (2011) Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty. Penguin/Allen Lane. This appears under a different title in the US: Baron-Cohen, S (2011) The Science of Evil: On empathy and the origins of human cruelty. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465023530
His multi-authored and edited books include:
Baron-Cohen, S, and Bolton, P, (1993) Autism: the facts. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, and Cohen, D.J. (eds,) (1993) Understanding other minds: perspectives from autism. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Harrison, J, (eds: 1997) Synaesthesia: classic and contemporary readings. Blackwells.
Baron-Cohen S, ed (1997). The maladapted mind: classic readings in evolutionary psychopathology. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press/Taylor Francis Group. ISBN 0-86377-460-1. Retrieved 21 January 2011</ref>
Howlin, P, Baron-Cohen, S, Hadwin, J, & Swettenham, J, (1999). Teaching children with autism to mind-read. Wiley.
Robertson, M, & Baron-Cohen, S, (1998) Tourette Syndrome: The facts. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, & Cohen, D, (eds. 2000). Understanding other minds: perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S & Wheelwright, S, (2004) An exact mind. Jessica Kingsley Ltd. Artwork by Peter Myers.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Lutchmaya, S, & Knickmeyer, R, (2005) Prenatal testosterone in mind: Studies of amniotic fluid. MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, and Cohen, D.J. (eds,) (2007) Understanding other minds: perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience – 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press.
Hadwin, J, Howlin, P, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2008) Teaching children with autism to mindread: a handbook. Wiley.
[edit]Papers
Baron-Cohen has authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers, including:
Baron-Cohen, S, Leslie, A.M., & Frith, U, (1985) Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind?” Cognition, 21, 37-46.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Wyke, M, & Binnie, C, (1987) Hearing words and seeing colours: an experimental investigation of a case of synaesthesia. Perception, 16, 761-67.
Baron-Cohen, S, Allen, J, & Gillberg, C, (1992) Can autism be detected at 18 months? The needle, the haystack, and the CHAT. British Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 839-843.
Baron-Cohen, S, (1994) How to build a baby that can read minds: Cognitive mechanisms in mindreading. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/ Current Psychology of Cognition, 13, 513-552.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Moriarty, J, Shmitz, P, Costa, D, & Ell, P, (1994) Recognition of mental state terms: a clinical study of autism, and a functional neuroimaging study of normal adults. British Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 640-649.
Baron-Cohen, S, Cox, A, Baird, G, Swettenham, J, Drew, A, Nightingale, N, Morgan, K, & Charman, T, (1996) Psychological markers of autism at 18 months of age in a large population. British Journal of Psychiatry, 168, 158-163.
Baron-Cohen, S, Jolliffe, T, Mortimore, C, & Robertson, M (1997) Another advanced test of theory of mind: evidence from very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 813-822.
Baron-Cohen, S, Wheelwright, S, Stott, C, Bolton, P, & Goodyer, I, (1997) Is there a link between engineering and autism? Autism, 1, 101-108.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Wheelwright, S, Bullmore, E, Brammer, M, Simmons, A, & Williams, S, (1999) Social intelligence in the normal and autistic brain: an fMRI study. European Journal of Neuroscience, 11, 1891-1898.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Bullmore, E, Wheelwright, S, Ashwin, C, & Williams, S, (2000) The amygdala theory of autism. Neuroscience and Behavioural Reviews, 24, 355-364.
Connellan, J, Baron-Cohen, S, Wheelwright, S, Ba’tki, A, & Ahluwalia, J, (2000) Sex differences in human neonatal social perception. Infant Behavior and Development, 23, 113-118.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Wheelwright, S, Skinner, R, Martin, J, & Clubley, E, (2001) The Autism-Spectrum Quotient: Evidence from Asperger Syndrome/high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists, and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 5-17.
Baron-Cohen, S, (2002) The extreme male brain theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 248-254.<br>
Lutchmaya, S, Baron-Cohen, S, & Raggatt, P, (2002) Foetal testosterone and eye contact in 12-month-old infants. Infant Behaviour and Development, 25, 327-335.
Nunn, J, Gregory, L, Morris, R, Brammer, M, Bullmore, E, Harrison, J, Williams, S, Baron-Cohen, S, and Gray, J, (2002) Functional magnetic resonance imaging of synaesthesia: activation of colour vision area V4/V8 by spoken words. Nature Neuroscience, 5, 371-375.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Wheelwright, S, (2004) The Empathy Quotient (EQ). An investigation of adults with Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism, and normal sex differences. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34, 163-175.
Baron-Cohen, S, Knickmeyer, R, & Belmonte, M (2005) Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism. Science, 310, 819-823.
Chapman, E, Baron-Cohen, S, Auyeung, B, Knickmeyer, R, Taylor, K & Hackett, G (2006) Foetal testosterone and empathy: evidence from the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test’. Social Neuroscience, 1, 135-148.<br>
Auyeung, B, Baron-Cohen, S, Chapman, E, Knickmeyer, R, Taylor, K & Hackett, G, (2009) Foetal testosterone and autistic traits. British Journal of Psychology, 100, 1-22.
Baron-Cohen, S, Scott, F, J, Allison, C, Williams, J, Bolton, P, Matthews, F, E, & Brayne, C, (2009) Autism Spectrum Prevalence: a school-based U.K. population study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 194, 500-509.
Chakrabarti, B, Dudridge, F, Kent, L, Wheelwright, S, Hill-Cawthorne, G, Allison, C, Banerjee-Basu, S, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2009) Genes related to sex-steroids, neural growth and social-emotional behaviour are associated with autistic traits, empathy and Asperger Syndrome. Autism Research, 2, 157-177.
Asher, J, Lamb, J, A, Brocklebank, D, Cazier, J-B, Maestrini, E, Addis, L, Sen, M, Baron-Cohen, S, & Monaco, A, P, (2009) A whole-genome scan and fine-mapping linkage study of autidory-visual synthethesia reveals evidence of linkage to chromosomes 2q24, 5q33, 6p12 and 12p12. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 84, 279-285.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Golan, O, & Ashwin, E, (2009) Can emotion recognition be taught to children with autism spectrum conditions? Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B, Special Issue, 364, 3567-3574.<br>
Auyeung, B, Taylor, K, Hackett, G, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Fetal testosterone and autistic traits in 18 to 24-month-old children, Molecular Autism, 1:11.
Chura, L, Lombardo, M, Ashwin, E, Auyeung, B, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, T, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Organizational effects of fetal testosterone on human corpus callosum size and asymmetry. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 35, 122-132.
Golan, O, Baron-Cohen, S, Ashwin, E, Granader, Y, McClintock, S, Day, K, & Leggett, V, (2010) Enhancing emotion recognition in children with autism spectrum conditions: an intervention using animated vehicles with real emotional faces. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40, 269-279.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, Sadek, S, Pasco, G, Wheelwright, S, Suckling, J, MRC AIMS Consortium & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Atypical neural self-representation in autism. Brain, 133, 611-624.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, & Wheelwright, S, Sadek, S, Suckling, J, MRC AIMS Consortium & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Shared neural circuits for mentalizing about the self and others. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 277, 1623-1635.
Wheelwright, S, Auyeung, B, Allison, C, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Defining the broader, medium and narrow autism phenotype among parents using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Molecular Autism,1, 10.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti; B, Bullmore, E, MRC AIMS Consortium and Baron-Cohen, S, (2011). Specialization of right temporo-parietal junction for mentalizing and its relation to social impairments in autism. NeuroImage 2011 Feb 26 [Epub ahead of print].
Ruta, L, Ingudomnukul, E, Taylor, E, Chakrabarti, B, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2011) Increased serum androstenedione in adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2011 Mar 11 [Epub ahead of print].
Baron-Cohen was awarded the Spearman Medal from the British Psychological Society (BPS), the McAndless Award from the American Psychological Association, the May Davison Award for Clinical Psychology from the BPS, and the Presidents Award from the BPS. He was President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Section for Psychology in 2007, and was Vice President of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) for 2009-11. He is also a Vice President of the National Autistic Society (UK). He is a Fellow of the BPS, the BA, and the Association of Psychological Science.
Baron-Cohen is co-editor in chief of the journal Molecular Autism.[10] and is Chair of the NICE Guideline Development Group for adults with autism
Selected publications
Books
Baron-Cohen's single authored books:
Baron-Cohen, S (1995) Mindblindness: an essay on autism and theory of mind. MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Baron-Cohen, S (2003) The Essential Difference: men, women and the extreme male brain. Penguin/Basic Books. ISBN 978-0713996715
Baron-Cohen, S (2008) Autism and Asperger Syndrome: The Facts. OUP.
Baron-Cohen, S (2011) Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty. Penguin/Allen Lane. This appears under a different title in the US: Baron-Cohen, S (2011) The Science of Evil: On empathy and the origins of human cruelty. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465023530
His multi-authored and edited books include:
Baron-Cohen, S, and Bolton, P, (1993) Autism: the facts. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, and Cohen, D.J. (eds,) (1993) Understanding other minds: perspectives from autism. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Harrison, J, (eds: 1997) Synaesthesia: classic and contemporary readings. Blackwells.
Baron-Cohen S, ed (1997). The maladapted mind: classic readings in evolutionary psychopathology. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press/Taylor Francis Group. ISBN 0-86377-460-1. Retrieved 21 January 2011</ref>
Howlin, P, Baron-Cohen, S, Hadwin, J, & Swettenham, J, (1999). Teaching children with autism to mind-read. Wiley.
Robertson, M, & Baron-Cohen, S, (1998) Tourette Syndrome: The facts. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, & Cohen, D, (eds. 2000). Understanding other minds: perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S & Wheelwright, S, (2004) An exact mind. Jessica Kingsley Ltd. Artwork by Peter Myers.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Lutchmaya, S, & Knickmeyer, R, (2005) Prenatal testosterone in mind: Studies of amniotic fluid. MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, and Cohen, D.J. (eds,) (2007) Understanding other minds: perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience – 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press.
Hadwin, J, Howlin, P, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2008) Teaching children with autism to mindread: a handbook. Wiley.
[edit]Papers
Baron-Cohen has authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers, including:
Baron-Cohen, S, Leslie, A.M., & Frith, U, (1985) Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind?” Cognition, 21, 37-46.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Wyke, M, & Binnie, C, (1987) Hearing words and seeing colours: an experimental investigation of a case of synaesthesia. Perception, 16, 761-67.
Baron-Cohen, S, Allen, J, & Gillberg, C, (1992) Can autism be detected at 18 months? The needle, the haystack, and the CHAT. British Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 839-843.
Baron-Cohen, S, (1994) How to build a baby that can read minds: Cognitive mechanisms in mindreading. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/ Current Psychology of Cognition, 13, 513-552.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Moriarty, J, Shmitz, P, Costa, D, & Ell, P, (1994) Recognition of mental state terms: a clinical study of autism, and a functional neuroimaging study of normal adults. British Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 640-649.
Baron-Cohen, S, Cox, A, Baird, G, Swettenham, J, Drew, A, Nightingale, N, Morgan, K, & Charman, T, (1996) Psychological markers of autism at 18 months of age in a large population. British Journal of Psychiatry, 168, 158-163.
Baron-Cohen, S, Jolliffe, T, Mortimore, C, & Robertson, M (1997) Another advanced test of theory of mind: evidence from very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 813-822.
Baron-Cohen, S, Wheelwright, S, Stott, C, Bolton, P, & Goodyer, I, (1997) Is there a link between engineering and autism? Autism, 1, 101-108.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Wheelwright, S, Bullmore, E, Brammer, M, Simmons, A, & Williams, S, (1999) Social intelligence in the normal and autistic brain: an fMRI study. European Journal of Neuroscience, 11, 1891-1898.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Bullmore, E, Wheelwright, S, Ashwin, C, & Williams, S, (2000) The amygdala theory of autism. Neuroscience and Behavioural Reviews, 24, 355-364.
Connellan, J, Baron-Cohen, S, Wheelwright, S, Ba’tki, A, & Ahluwalia, J, (2000) Sex differences in human neonatal social perception. Infant Behavior and Development, 23, 113-118.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Wheelwright, S, Skinner, R, Martin, J, & Clubley, E, (2001) The Autism-Spectrum Quotient: Evidence from Asperger Syndrome/high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists, and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 5-17.
Baron-Cohen, S, (2002) The extreme male brain theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 248-254.<br>
Lutchmaya, S, Baron-Cohen, S, & Raggatt, P, (2002) Foetal testosterone and eye contact in 12-month-old infants. Infant Behaviour and Development, 25, 327-335.
Nunn, J, Gregory, L, Morris, R, Brammer, M, Bullmore, E, Harrison, J, Williams, S, Baron-Cohen, S, and Gray, J, (2002) Functional magnetic resonance imaging of synaesthesia: activation of colour vision area V4/V8 by spoken words. Nature Neuroscience, 5, 371-375.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Wheelwright, S, (2004) The Empathy Quotient (EQ). An investigation of adults with Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism, and normal sex differences. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34, 163-175.
Baron-Cohen, S, Knickmeyer, R, & Belmonte, M (2005) Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism. Science, 310, 819-823.
Chapman, E, Baron-Cohen, S, Auyeung, B, Knickmeyer, R, Taylor, K & Hackett, G (2006) Foetal testosterone and empathy: evidence from the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test’. Social Neuroscience, 1, 135-148.<br>
Auyeung, B, Baron-Cohen, S, Chapman, E, Knickmeyer, R, Taylor, K & Hackett, G, (2009) Foetal testosterone and autistic traits. British Journal of Psychology, 100, 1-22.
Baron-Cohen, S, Scott, F, J, Allison, C, Williams, J, Bolton, P, Matthews, F, E, & Brayne, C, (2009) Autism Spectrum Prevalence: a school-based U.K. population study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 194, 500-509.
Chakrabarti, B, Dudridge, F, Kent, L, Wheelwright, S, Hill-Cawthorne, G, Allison, C, Banerjee-Basu, S, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2009) Genes related to sex-steroids, neural growth and social-emotional behaviour are associated with autistic traits, empathy and Asperger Syndrome. Autism Research, 2, 157-177.
Asher, J, Lamb, J, A, Brocklebank, D, Cazier, J-B, Maestrini, E, Addis, L, Sen, M, Baron-Cohen, S, & Monaco, A, P, (2009) A whole-genome scan and fine-mapping linkage study of autidory-visual synthethesia reveals evidence of linkage to chromosomes 2q24, 5q33, 6p12 and 12p12. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 84, 279-285.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Golan, O, & Ashwin, E, (2009) Can emotion recognition be taught to children with autism spectrum conditions? Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B, Special Issue, 364, 3567-3574.<br>
Auyeung, B, Taylor, K, Hackett, G, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Fetal testosterone and autistic traits in 18 to 24-month-old children, Molecular Autism, 1:11.
Chura, L, Lombardo, M, Ashwin, E, Auyeung, B, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, T, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Organizational effects of fetal testosterone on human corpus callosum size and asymmetry. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 35, 122-132.
Golan, O, Baron-Cohen, S, Ashwin, E, Granader, Y, McClintock, S, Day, K, & Leggett, V, (2010) Enhancing emotion recognition in children with autism spectrum conditions: an intervention using animated vehicles with real emotional faces. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40, 269-279.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, Sadek, S, Pasco, G, Wheelwright, S, Suckling, J, MRC AIMS Consortium & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Atypical neural self-representation in autism. Brain, 133, 611-624.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, & Wheelwright, S, Sadek, S, Suckling, J, MRC AIMS Consortium & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Shared neural circuits for mentalizing about the self and others. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 277, 1623-1635.
Wheelwright, S, Auyeung, B, Allison, C, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Defining the broader, medium and narrow autism phenotype among parents using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Molecular Autism,1, 10.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti; B, Bullmore, E, MRC AIMS Consortium and Baron-Cohen, S, (2011). Specialization of right temporo-parietal junction for mentalizing and its relation to social impairments in autism. NeuroImage 2011 Feb 26 [Epub ahead of print].
Ruta, L, Ingudomnukul, E, Taylor, E, Chakrabarti, B, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2011) Increased serum androstenedione in adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2011 Mar 11 [Epub ahead of print].
Baron-Cohen was awarded the Spearman Medal from the British Psychological Society (BPS), the McAndless Award from the American Psychological Association, the May Davison Award for Clinical Psychology from the BPS, and the Presidents Award from the BPS. He was President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Section for Psychology in 2007, and was Vice President of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) for 2009-11. He is also a Vice President of the National Autistic Society (UK). He is a Fellow of the BPS, the BA, and the Association of Psychological Science.
Baron-Cohen is co-editor in chief of the journal Molecular Autism.[10] and is Chair of the NICE Guideline Development Group for adults with autism
Should your qualifications and list of publications outstrip those of Baron Cohen's, I will happily concede your analytical and biostatistical superiority.
03 Nov 2011, 8:29 am
chssmstrjk wrote:
What do you think of this criticism so far?
1. Yes, probably the answers should be weighted by their capacity to discriminate.
2. Studies like this are expensive, and you take the available sample. There are later meta-analyses using multiple control samples.
3. The case:control ratio makes absolutely no difference to the development of the discriminatory test, which requires only the largest possible sample of each. There would be no value in discarding cases to reach an estimated population ratio. The low population ratio does make a HUGE difference to the specificity of the test as a screening tool.
There are many follow-up papers addressing these and other issues in the development of the test, by Baron-Cohen and others. The most important issue is whether a screening test like the ASQ matches the diagnostic label applied following other (more expensive and intrusive) methods, e.g.:
Berument SK, Rutter M, Lord C, Pickles A, Bailey A. Autism screening questionnaire: diagnostic validity. Br J Psychiatry. 1999 Nov;175:444-51.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Good interview and diagnostic measures for autism and other pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) are available but there is a lack of a good screening questionnaire.
AIMS: To develop and test a screening questionnaire based on items in the best available diagnostic interview--the Autism Diagnostic Interview--Revised (ADI-R).
METHOD: A 40-item scale, the Autism Screening Questionnaire (ASQ), was developed and tested on a sample of 160 individuals with PDD and 40 with non-PDD diagnoses.
RESULTS: The ASQ has good discriminative validity with respect to the separation of PDD from non-PDD diagnoses at all IQ levels, with a cut-off of 15 proving most effective. The differentiation between autism and other varieties of PDD was weaker.
CONCLUSIONS: The ASQ is an effective screening questionnaire for PDD.
03 Nov 2011, 11:51 am
Quote:
Should your qualifications and list of publications outstrip those of Baron Cohen's, I will happily concede your analytical and biostatistical superiority.
That's a fallacy. You should judge based on what the person is actually saying, not on who is saying it (unless they're saying something about their own personal experience, of course).
Anyway, my comments on the OP's criticisms:
1. Well, it is valid to have a scale designed with multiple degrees, but it's also valid to have a simple yes/no scale. They both have advantages and disadvantages. You pointed out one of the big advantages to scaled answers - addressing the question of degree. One of the big advantages of yes/no questions is that they're a lot easier to answer consistently. Instead of trying to decide whether flapping your hands whenever you're excited counts as 'often', 'sometimes' or 'occasionally', you can just say 'yes' to hand-flapping. This also makes different people's responses more comparable, since different people may give different scale answers for the exact same frequency of behavior, but all of them would answer the same to a yes/no question. So, in conclusion, both methods are valid, they simply have different strengths and weaknesses.
2. If it's the study I'm thinking of, they stated in the methods section that they excluded anyone with a reported psychiatric diagnosis from the control group (which is standard), though no doubt they still had some undiagnosed or undisclosed conditions among a few subjects. Nevertheless, with the exception of depression and mild anxiety disorders, most psychiatric conditions are infrequent enough that they wouldn't make a big difference to the results provided the sample size was reasonably large.
3. It doesn't matter if all the subjects put together have a similar distribution to the general population, unless they ran statistics on the whole sample. What matters is if the different groups have a similar distribution to that of the populations they were drawn from - ie the autistic group is representative of autistic people in general (or the subset they're interested in, such as high functioning autistics) and the control groups are representative of non-autistic people of the categories they're drawing conclusions for. If it's the study I'm thinking of, at no point did they do stats on the entire sample. Instead they ran stats comparing the different groups, in which case it's best statistically for the groups to be similar sizes even if the population frequencies of each group are very different. The big area where sample bias is important is in comparing the samples to the groups referred to in the discussion section. For example (this is very common) if the discussion is talking about NTs in general and the NT sample consisted of university students.
03 Nov 2011, 1:01 pm
chssmstrjk wrote:
1. Regardless of the degree of autistic/NT answer to each multiple choice question, you
score either no points or 1 point for that question depending upon which answer for
that question is the autistic one. It should be so that the more autistic sounding an
answer for the question is, the more points they score for that question.
[Suggestion: I will explain this later.]
score either no points or 1 point for that question depending upon which answer for
that question is the autistic one. It should be so that the more autistic sounding an
answer for the question is, the more points they score for that question.
[Suggestion: I will explain this later.]
My suggestion in regards to #1 is that for the "slightly ____________" choice that is in the direction of an "autistic" answer for a question, make that worth 2/3 or 0.667 points. For the "slightly ________" choice that is in the direction of an "NT or Normal" answer for a question, make that work 1/3 or 0.333 points. I would still score the "Definitely __________" choice that is in the direction of an "autistic" answer 1 point and the "Definitely ___________" choice that is in the direction of an "NT or normal" answer 0 points.
chssmstrjk wrote:
2. According to the original article based on this study that was published, it states that
Group 2 consisted of randomly selected controls. They don't clearly define whether or
not this group was entirely neurotypical or that none of the people in this group were
diagnosed with a mental disorder. [Suggestion: I will explain this later.]
Group 2 consisted of randomly selected controls. They don't clearly define whether or
not this group was entirely neurotypical or that none of the people in this group were
diagnosed with a mental disorder. [Suggestion: I will explain this later.]
My suggestion in regards to #2 is that they should specifically state in the article that the randomly selected controls are neurotypicals who have not been previously diagnosed with a mental disorder. They shouldn't leave it up to the reader to infer that.
chssmstrjk wrote:
3. The sample size in the population for this study is not exactly representative of the
population. The ratio of the so-called controls to AS/HFA subjects is 3 to 1 (ummm....
no more than 1% of the population is diagnosed somewhere on the autism spectrum).
[Suggestion: I will explain this later.]
population. The ratio of the so-called controls to AS/HFA subjects is 3 to 1 (ummm....
no more than 1% of the population is diagnosed somewhere on the autism spectrum).
[Suggestion: I will explain this later.]
My suggestion would be try to get the ratio of controls/NTs to AS/HFA subjects closer to 99:1 than 3:1. In the original study, there were 174 randomly selected people for the control group. I am assuming that control = neurotypical. According to the article on the original study, there were 58 people previously diagnosed with AS/HFA. The other two groups don't count (in my opinion) when figuring out the NT:(AS/HFA) ratio.
I am aware that it sounds highly unrealistic to obtain a NT:(AS/HFA) ratio of 99:1 in the sense that if I wanted, for example, 100 people with AS/HFA to take the ASQ since then I would have to get at least 9900 neurotypical people just to meet the 99:1 ratio which would take practically FOREVER (or many years if that many people [who are interested in participating in such a study] can be found. I am just saying that for a future study that pertains to this, get a NT:(AS/HFA) ratio of somewhere around 15:1 or 20:1 or any other value for the ratio that is possible to obtain, but significantly closer to 99:1 than 3:1.
Sorry I couldn't elaborate on these suggestions in my OP. I had class this morning which started at 9 am and it usually takes me about an hour to get from home to the building where all of my grad school classes are held. Thus, I didn't have time to explain them as you can probably see just by the length of these suggestions. What do you think of these suggestions of mine? Do they sound reasonable?
03 Nov 2011, 1:14 pm
DreamSofa wrote:
Dear Potential Biostatistician
I am unconvinced by your critique of Baron Cohen's methodology. (Incidentally, he is the cousin of the actor who created the character Borat.)
As you are a potential biostastician, can you please post your qualifications and list of publications so that readers of this forum can compare your qualifications to Baron Cohen's and therefore make an informed decision about who is better equipped to design a large-scale mixed methods study?
I have taken the liberty of copying some information from BC's page in Wikipedia.
Should your qualifications and list of publications outstrip those of Baron Cohen's, I will happily concede your analytical and biostatistical superiority.
I am unconvinced by your critique of Baron Cohen's methodology. (Incidentally, he is the cousin of the actor who created the character Borat.)
As you are a potential biostastician, can you please post your qualifications and list of publications so that readers of this forum can compare your qualifications to Baron Cohen's and therefore make an informed decision about who is better equipped to design a large-scale mixed methods study?
I have taken the liberty of copying some information from BC's page in Wikipedia.
Quote:
Baron-Cohen completed an MA in Human Sciences at New College, Oxford, and an MPhil in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. He did his PhD in Psychology at University College London under the supervision of Uta Frith.
Selected publications
Books
Baron-Cohen's single authored books:
Baron-Cohen, S (1995) Mindblindness: an essay on autism and theory of mind. MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Baron-Cohen, S (2003) The Essential Difference: men, women and the extreme male brain. Penguin/Basic Books. ISBN 978-0713996715
Baron-Cohen, S (2008) Autism and Asperger Syndrome: The Facts. OUP.
Baron-Cohen, S (2011) Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty. Penguin/Allen Lane. This appears under a different title in the US: Baron-Cohen, S (2011) The Science of Evil: On empathy and the origins of human cruelty. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465023530
His multi-authored and edited books include:
Baron-Cohen, S, and Bolton, P, (1993) Autism: the facts. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, and Cohen, D.J. (eds,) (1993) Understanding other minds: perspectives from autism. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Harrison, J, (eds: 1997) Synaesthesia: classic and contemporary readings. Blackwells.
Baron-Cohen S, ed (1997). The maladapted mind: classic readings in evolutionary psychopathology. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press/Taylor Francis Group. ISBN 0-86377-460-1. Retrieved 21 January 2011</ref>
Howlin, P, Baron-Cohen, S, Hadwin, J, & Swettenham, J, (1999). Teaching children with autism to mind-read. Wiley.
Robertson, M, & Baron-Cohen, S, (1998) Tourette Syndrome: The facts. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, & Cohen, D, (eds. 2000). Understanding other minds: perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S & Wheelwright, S, (2004) An exact mind. Jessica Kingsley Ltd. Artwork by Peter Myers.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Lutchmaya, S, & Knickmeyer, R, (2005) Prenatal testosterone in mind: Studies of amniotic fluid. MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, and Cohen, D.J. (eds,) (2007) Understanding other minds: perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience – 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press.
Hadwin, J, Howlin, P, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2008) Teaching children with autism to mindread: a handbook. Wiley.
[edit]Papers
Baron-Cohen has authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers, including:
Baron-Cohen, S, Leslie, A.M., & Frith, U, (1985) Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind?” Cognition, 21, 37-46.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Wyke, M, & Binnie, C, (1987) Hearing words and seeing colours: an experimental investigation of a case of synaesthesia. Perception, 16, 761-67.
Baron-Cohen, S, Allen, J, & Gillberg, C, (1992) Can autism be detected at 18 months? The needle, the haystack, and the CHAT. British Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 839-843.
Baron-Cohen, S, (1994) How to build a baby that can read minds: Cognitive mechanisms in mindreading. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/ Current Psychology of Cognition, 13, 513-552.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Moriarty, J, Shmitz, P, Costa, D, & Ell, P, (1994) Recognition of mental state terms: a clinical study of autism, and a functional neuroimaging study of normal adults. British Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 640-649.
Baron-Cohen, S, Cox, A, Baird, G, Swettenham, J, Drew, A, Nightingale, N, Morgan, K, & Charman, T, (1996) Psychological markers of autism at 18 months of age in a large population. British Journal of Psychiatry, 168, 158-163.
Baron-Cohen, S, Jolliffe, T, Mortimore, C, & Robertson, M (1997) Another advanced test of theory of mind: evidence from very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 813-822.
Baron-Cohen, S, Wheelwright, S, Stott, C, Bolton, P, & Goodyer, I, (1997) Is there a link between engineering and autism? Autism, 1, 101-108.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Wheelwright, S, Bullmore, E, Brammer, M, Simmons, A, & Williams, S, (1999) Social intelligence in the normal and autistic brain: an fMRI study. European Journal of Neuroscience, 11, 1891-1898.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Bullmore, E, Wheelwright, S, Ashwin, C, & Williams, S, (2000) The amygdala theory of autism. Neuroscience and Behavioural Reviews, 24, 355-364.
Connellan, J, Baron-Cohen, S, Wheelwright, S, Ba’tki, A, & Ahluwalia, J, (2000) Sex differences in human neonatal social perception. Infant Behavior and Development, 23, 113-118.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Wheelwright, S, Skinner, R, Martin, J, & Clubley, E, (2001) The Autism-Spectrum Quotient: Evidence from Asperger Syndrome/high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists, and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 5-17.
Baron-Cohen, S, (2002) The extreme male brain theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 248-254.<br>
Lutchmaya, S, Baron-Cohen, S, & Raggatt, P, (2002) Foetal testosterone and eye contact in 12-month-old infants. Infant Behaviour and Development, 25, 327-335.
Nunn, J, Gregory, L, Morris, R, Brammer, M, Bullmore, E, Harrison, J, Williams, S, Baron-Cohen, S, and Gray, J, (2002) Functional magnetic resonance imaging of synaesthesia: activation of colour vision area V4/V8 by spoken words. Nature Neuroscience, 5, 371-375.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Wheelwright, S, (2004) The Empathy Quotient (EQ). An investigation of adults with Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism, and normal sex differences. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34, 163-175.
Baron-Cohen, S, Knickmeyer, R, & Belmonte, M (2005) Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism. Science, 310, 819-823.
Chapman, E, Baron-Cohen, S, Auyeung, B, Knickmeyer, R, Taylor, K & Hackett, G (2006) Foetal testosterone and empathy: evidence from the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test’. Social Neuroscience, 1, 135-148.<br>
Auyeung, B, Baron-Cohen, S, Chapman, E, Knickmeyer, R, Taylor, K & Hackett, G, (2009) Foetal testosterone and autistic traits. British Journal of Psychology, 100, 1-22.
Baron-Cohen, S, Scott, F, J, Allison, C, Williams, J, Bolton, P, Matthews, F, E, & Brayne, C, (2009) Autism Spectrum Prevalence: a school-based U.K. population study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 194, 500-509.
Chakrabarti, B, Dudridge, F, Kent, L, Wheelwright, S, Hill-Cawthorne, G, Allison, C, Banerjee-Basu, S, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2009) Genes related to sex-steroids, neural growth and social-emotional behaviour are associated with autistic traits, empathy and Asperger Syndrome. Autism Research, 2, 157-177.
Asher, J, Lamb, J, A, Brocklebank, D, Cazier, J-B, Maestrini, E, Addis, L, Sen, M, Baron-Cohen, S, & Monaco, A, P, (2009) A whole-genome scan and fine-mapping linkage study of autidory-visual synthethesia reveals evidence of linkage to chromosomes 2q24, 5q33, 6p12 and 12p12. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 84, 279-285.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Golan, O, & Ashwin, E, (2009) Can emotion recognition be taught to children with autism spectrum conditions? Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B, Special Issue, 364, 3567-3574.<br>
Auyeung, B, Taylor, K, Hackett, G, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Fetal testosterone and autistic traits in 18 to 24-month-old children, Molecular Autism, 1:11.
Chura, L, Lombardo, M, Ashwin, E, Auyeung, B, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, T, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Organizational effects of fetal testosterone on human corpus callosum size and asymmetry. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 35, 122-132.
Golan, O, Baron-Cohen, S, Ashwin, E, Granader, Y, McClintock, S, Day, K, & Leggett, V, (2010) Enhancing emotion recognition in children with autism spectrum conditions: an intervention using animated vehicles with real emotional faces. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40, 269-279.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, Sadek, S, Pasco, G, Wheelwright, S, Suckling, J, MRC AIMS Consortium & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Atypical neural self-representation in autism. Brain, 133, 611-624.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, & Wheelwright, S, Sadek, S, Suckling, J, MRC AIMS Consortium & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Shared neural circuits for mentalizing about the self and others. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 277, 1623-1635.
Wheelwright, S, Auyeung, B, Allison, C, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Defining the broader, medium and narrow autism phenotype among parents using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Molecular Autism,1, 10.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti; B, Bullmore, E, MRC AIMS Consortium and Baron-Cohen, S, (2011). Specialization of right temporo-parietal junction for mentalizing and its relation to social impairments in autism. NeuroImage 2011 Feb 26 [Epub ahead of print].
Ruta, L, Ingudomnukul, E, Taylor, E, Chakrabarti, B, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2011) Increased serum androstenedione in adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2011 Mar 11 [Epub ahead of print].
Baron-Cohen was awarded the Spearman Medal from the British Psychological Society (BPS), the McAndless Award from the American Psychological Association, the May Davison Award for Clinical Psychology from the BPS, and the Presidents Award from the BPS. He was President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Section for Psychology in 2007, and was Vice President of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) for 2009-11. He is also a Vice President of the National Autistic Society (UK). He is a Fellow of the BPS, the BA, and the Association of Psychological Science.
Baron-Cohen is co-editor in chief of the journal Molecular Autism.[10] and is Chair of the NICE Guideline Development Group for adults with autism
Selected publications
Books
Baron-Cohen's single authored books:
Baron-Cohen, S (1995) Mindblindness: an essay on autism and theory of mind. MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Baron-Cohen, S (2003) The Essential Difference: men, women and the extreme male brain. Penguin/Basic Books. ISBN 978-0713996715
Baron-Cohen, S (2008) Autism and Asperger Syndrome: The Facts. OUP.
Baron-Cohen, S (2011) Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty. Penguin/Allen Lane. This appears under a different title in the US: Baron-Cohen, S (2011) The Science of Evil: On empathy and the origins of human cruelty. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465023530
His multi-authored and edited books include:
Baron-Cohen, S, and Bolton, P, (1993) Autism: the facts. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, and Cohen, D.J. (eds,) (1993) Understanding other minds: perspectives from autism. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Harrison, J, (eds: 1997) Synaesthesia: classic and contemporary readings. Blackwells.
Baron-Cohen S, ed (1997). The maladapted mind: classic readings in evolutionary psychopathology. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press/Taylor Francis Group. ISBN 0-86377-460-1. Retrieved 21 January 2011</ref>
Howlin, P, Baron-Cohen, S, Hadwin, J, & Swettenham, J, (1999). Teaching children with autism to mind-read. Wiley.
Robertson, M, & Baron-Cohen, S, (1998) Tourette Syndrome: The facts. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, & Cohen, D, (eds. 2000). Understanding other minds: perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience. Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S & Wheelwright, S, (2004) An exact mind. Jessica Kingsley Ltd. Artwork by Peter Myers.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Lutchmaya, S, & Knickmeyer, R, (2005) Prenatal testosterone in mind: Studies of amniotic fluid. MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Baron-Cohen, S, Tager-Flusberg, H, and Cohen, D.J. (eds,) (2007) Understanding other minds: perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience – 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press.
Hadwin, J, Howlin, P, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2008) Teaching children with autism to mindread: a handbook. Wiley.
[edit]Papers
Baron-Cohen has authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers, including:
Baron-Cohen, S, Leslie, A.M., & Frith, U, (1985) Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind?” Cognition, 21, 37-46.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Wyke, M, & Binnie, C, (1987) Hearing words and seeing colours: an experimental investigation of a case of synaesthesia. Perception, 16, 761-67.
Baron-Cohen, S, Allen, J, & Gillberg, C, (1992) Can autism be detected at 18 months? The needle, the haystack, and the CHAT. British Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 839-843.
Baron-Cohen, S, (1994) How to build a baby that can read minds: Cognitive mechanisms in mindreading. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/ Current Psychology of Cognition, 13, 513-552.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Moriarty, J, Shmitz, P, Costa, D, & Ell, P, (1994) Recognition of mental state terms: a clinical study of autism, and a functional neuroimaging study of normal adults. British Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 640-649.
Baron-Cohen, S, Cox, A, Baird, G, Swettenham, J, Drew, A, Nightingale, N, Morgan, K, & Charman, T, (1996) Psychological markers of autism at 18 months of age in a large population. British Journal of Psychiatry, 168, 158-163.
Baron-Cohen, S, Jolliffe, T, Mortimore, C, & Robertson, M (1997) Another advanced test of theory of mind: evidence from very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 813-822.
Baron-Cohen, S, Wheelwright, S, Stott, C, Bolton, P, & Goodyer, I, (1997) Is there a link between engineering and autism? Autism, 1, 101-108.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Wheelwright, S, Bullmore, E, Brammer, M, Simmons, A, & Williams, S, (1999) Social intelligence in the normal and autistic brain: an fMRI study. European Journal of Neuroscience, 11, 1891-1898.
Baron-Cohen, S, Ring, H, Bullmore, E, Wheelwright, S, Ashwin, C, & Williams, S, (2000) The amygdala theory of autism. Neuroscience and Behavioural Reviews, 24, 355-364.
Connellan, J, Baron-Cohen, S, Wheelwright, S, Ba’tki, A, & Ahluwalia, J, (2000) Sex differences in human neonatal social perception. Infant Behavior and Development, 23, 113-118.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Wheelwright, S, Skinner, R, Martin, J, & Clubley, E, (2001) The Autism-Spectrum Quotient: Evidence from Asperger Syndrome/high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists, and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 5-17.
Baron-Cohen, S, (2002) The extreme male brain theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 248-254.<br>
Lutchmaya, S, Baron-Cohen, S, & Raggatt, P, (2002) Foetal testosterone and eye contact in 12-month-old infants. Infant Behaviour and Development, 25, 327-335.
Nunn, J, Gregory, L, Morris, R, Brammer, M, Bullmore, E, Harrison, J, Williams, S, Baron-Cohen, S, and Gray, J, (2002) Functional magnetic resonance imaging of synaesthesia: activation of colour vision area V4/V8 by spoken words. Nature Neuroscience, 5, 371-375.
Baron-Cohen, S, & Wheelwright, S, (2004) The Empathy Quotient (EQ). An investigation of adults with Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism, and normal sex differences. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34, 163-175.
Baron-Cohen, S, Knickmeyer, R, & Belmonte, M (2005) Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism. Science, 310, 819-823.
Chapman, E, Baron-Cohen, S, Auyeung, B, Knickmeyer, R, Taylor, K & Hackett, G (2006) Foetal testosterone and empathy: evidence from the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test’. Social Neuroscience, 1, 135-148.<br>
Auyeung, B, Baron-Cohen, S, Chapman, E, Knickmeyer, R, Taylor, K & Hackett, G, (2009) Foetal testosterone and autistic traits. British Journal of Psychology, 100, 1-22.
Baron-Cohen, S, Scott, F, J, Allison, C, Williams, J, Bolton, P, Matthews, F, E, & Brayne, C, (2009) Autism Spectrum Prevalence: a school-based U.K. population study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 194, 500-509.
Chakrabarti, B, Dudridge, F, Kent, L, Wheelwright, S, Hill-Cawthorne, G, Allison, C, Banerjee-Basu, S, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2009) Genes related to sex-steroids, neural growth and social-emotional behaviour are associated with autistic traits, empathy and Asperger Syndrome. Autism Research, 2, 157-177.
Asher, J, Lamb, J, A, Brocklebank, D, Cazier, J-B, Maestrini, E, Addis, L, Sen, M, Baron-Cohen, S, & Monaco, A, P, (2009) A whole-genome scan and fine-mapping linkage study of autidory-visual synthethesia reveals evidence of linkage to chromosomes 2q24, 5q33, 6p12 and 12p12. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 84, 279-285.<br>
Baron-Cohen, S, Golan, O, & Ashwin, E, (2009) Can emotion recognition be taught to children with autism spectrum conditions? Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B, Special Issue, 364, 3567-3574.<br>
Auyeung, B, Taylor, K, Hackett, G, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Fetal testosterone and autistic traits in 18 to 24-month-old children, Molecular Autism, 1:11.
Chura, L, Lombardo, M, Ashwin, E, Auyeung, B, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, T, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Organizational effects of fetal testosterone on human corpus callosum size and asymmetry. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 35, 122-132.
Golan, O, Baron-Cohen, S, Ashwin, E, Granader, Y, McClintock, S, Day, K, & Leggett, V, (2010) Enhancing emotion recognition in children with autism spectrum conditions: an intervention using animated vehicles with real emotional faces. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40, 269-279.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, Sadek, S, Pasco, G, Wheelwright, S, Suckling, J, MRC AIMS Consortium & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Atypical neural self-representation in autism. Brain, 133, 611-624.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti, B, Bullmore, E, & Wheelwright, S, Sadek, S, Suckling, J, MRC AIMS Consortium & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Shared neural circuits for mentalizing about the self and others. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 277, 1623-1635.
Wheelwright, S, Auyeung, B, Allison, C, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2010) Defining the broader, medium and narrow autism phenotype among parents using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Molecular Autism,1, 10.
Lombardo, M, Chakrabarti; B, Bullmore, E, MRC AIMS Consortium and Baron-Cohen, S, (2011). Specialization of right temporo-parietal junction for mentalizing and its relation to social impairments in autism. NeuroImage 2011 Feb 26 [Epub ahead of print].
Ruta, L, Ingudomnukul, E, Taylor, E, Chakrabarti, B, & Baron-Cohen, S, (2011) Increased serum androstenedione in adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2011 Mar 11 [Epub ahead of print].
Baron-Cohen was awarded the Spearman Medal from the British Psychological Society (BPS), the McAndless Award from the American Psychological Association, the May Davison Award for Clinical Psychology from the BPS, and the Presidents Award from the BPS. He was President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Section for Psychology in 2007, and was Vice President of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) for 2009-11. He is also a Vice President of the National Autistic Society (UK). He is a Fellow of the BPS, the BA, and the Association of Psychological Science.
Baron-Cohen is co-editor in chief of the journal Molecular Autism.[10] and is Chair of the NICE Guideline Development Group for adults with autism
Should your qualifications and list of publications outstrip those of Baron Cohen's, I will happily concede your analytical and biostatistical superiority.
I will admit that he has a ton of qualifications and list of publications under his belt. It is apparent that he has been doing medical studies for YEARS. I don't think I can compete with that. I had no intention of making myself look superior in comparison to him. I just wanted to apply what I have learned in my Biostatistics courses so far (I am only a first-year student) to analysis of already published studies that are in a field that is a special interest of mine (i.e. autism spectrum disorders).
As of right now, I have only one published study under my belt and I hope to get studies (whatever topic they might be on) published in the future. That published study is as follows:
Persistent toe walking in autism. Barrow WJ, Jaworski M, Accardo PJ. J Child Neurol. 2011 May;26(5):619-21. Epub 2011 Jan 31. PMID:21285033[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21285033.
Verdandi
Veteran
Joined: 7 Dec 2010
Age: 55
Gender: Female
Posts: 12,275
Location: University of California Sunnydale (fictional location - Real location Olympia, WA)
03 Nov 2011, 1:20 pm
What is it you're critiquing? The quiz' value as a screening tool? Or something else?
There's a lot to critique (especially how some of the questions are worded - asking us to judge what other people think of certain actions we may or may not take), but I'm wondering what your end goal is.
03 Nov 2011, 2:14 pm
Verdandi wrote:
What is it you're critiquing? The quiz' value as a screening tool? Or something else?
There's a lot to critique (especially how some of the questions are worded - asking us to judge what other people think of certain actions we may or may not take), but I'm wondering what your end goal is.
There's a lot to critique (especially how some of the questions are worded - asking us to judge what other people think of certain actions we may or may not take), but I'm wondering what your end goal is.
The two things that I am critiquing on is the value of the ASQ as a screening tool and the experimental design of the original study that used the ASQ as a screening tool.
03 Nov 2011, 2:23 pm
Screw Cohen and all his so called qualifications. In my opinion a degree doesn't mean anything except that you conformed to someone's else's theory and you went to college/graduate school, and being a published author doesn't guarantee that he knows what he is talking about, it just means he knows how to write a book. The studies are a bit more grounded, but I can argue that they are BS like everything else. I hate the publics obsession with medical studies and media haste to declare certain interpretations as fact.
I can be as stubborn, insolent, and skeptical as I want to be.
As for my qualifications, I....uh.....actually have AS, so in my opinion that already makes more qualified to discuss the subject than Cohen will ever be. Of course, he could just play his lack of ToM card on me to say that I don't know what I'm talking about, so I need to create a counter to that....heck, I just want I good old-fashioned scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs-at-eachother style debate, or something like what was discussed in that sticky thread might work fine. I'm sure debating with a renowned writer would look good on a college application, then I could get my OWN degree, and conduct my OWN studies, and write my OWN books and... I'm crazy and should probably just shut up now. I swear I'm currently on some sort of random natural high right now. 
04 Nov 2011, 11:06 am
Quote:
My suggestion in regards to #1 is that for the "slightly ____________" choice that is in the direction of an "autistic" answer for a question, make that worth 2/3 or 0.667 points. For the "slightly ________" choice that is in the direction of an "NT or Normal" answer for a question, make that work 1/3 or 0.333 points. I would still score the "Definitely __________" choice that is in the direction of an "autistic" answer 1 point and the "Definitely ___________" choice that is in the direction of an "NT or normal" answer 0 points.
That wouldn't make any real difference. What matters is the comparison between groups, not the total score. If you score it as 0, 1, 2 or 3; or as 0, .33, .67 and 1; the ratios are the same. You'd just make the math harder because fractions are more tricky to add than whole scores. The measurement value of the scale would be exactly the same.
Quote:
My suggestion in regards to #2 is that they should specifically state in the article that the randomly selected controls are neurotypicals who have not been previously diagnosed with a mental disorder. They shouldn't leave it up to the reader to infer that.
I'm pretty sure they did. Not in the abstract, but in the methods section of the full paper. CAn you point out the study you're discussing, so I can check for sure?
Quote:
My suggestion would be try to get the ratio of controls/NTs to AS/HFA subjects closer to 99:1 than 3:1. In the original study, there were 174 randomly selected people for the control group. I am assuming that control = neurotypical. According to the article on the original study, there were 58 people previously diagnosed with AS/HFA. The other two groups don't count (in my opinion) when figuring out the NT:(AS/HFA) ratio.
I am aware that it sounds highly unrealistic to obtain a NT:(AS/HFA) ratio of 99:1 in the sense that if I wanted, for example, 100 people with AS/HFA to take the ASQ since then I would have to get at least 9900 neurotypical people just to meet the 99:1 ratio which would take practically FOREVER (or many years if that many people [who are interested in participating in such a study] can be found. I am just saying that for a future study that pertains to this, get a NT:(AS/HFA) ratio of somewhere around 15:1 or 20:1 or any other value for the ratio that is possible to obtain, but significantly closer to 99:1 than 3:1.
I am aware that it sounds highly unrealistic to obtain a NT:(AS/HFA) ratio of 99:1 in the sense that if I wanted, for example, 100 people with AS/HFA to take the ASQ since then I would have to get at least 9900 neurotypical people just to meet the 99:1 ratio which would take practically FOREVER (or many years if that many people [who are interested in participating in such a study] can be found. I am just saying that for a future study that pertains to this, get a NT:(AS/HFA) ratio of somewhere around 15:1 or 20:1 or any other value for the ratio that is possible to obtain, but significantly closer to 99:1 than 3:1.
The stats actually work slightly better if the two groups are equal size.
If they were pooling results from both groups, that's the only situation where it would help to have a real-life ratio of the two groups. By this, I mean if they had 'the average score for the entire sample' instead of just averages for individual groups. Note that the only time I've ever seen researchers do this is with sex differences - I have never seen an article about any mental disability or difference pool the results like that.
See, the two groups are not drawn from the same 'population', and therefore it makes no sense to lump them together. The population for the autistic sample would be autistic people, and for the controls it would be NTs. What they're trying to do is compare the two samples in order to infer whether or not there are differences in the populations the samples were drawn from. The samples have to be representative of the populations for this to occur. But there is no reason why the two samples pooled together have to be representative of the two populations pooled together, because they're not analyzing pooled data.
Quote:
As for my qualifications, I....uh.....actually have AS, so in my opinion that already makes more qualified to discuss the subject than Cohen will ever be.
Your AS makes you more qualified to say what is going on in the head of one particular AS person - yourself. It does not more qualified to discuss statistical techniques and psychometrics, both of which are highly technical areas of knowledge in which personal experiences aren't very useful for teaching you about that. You do not have as much education in statistical techniques yet as Simon Baron-Cohen has, which makes you less qualified to judge that. Your experience as a person with AS is only going to give you an advantage in theoretical interpretation of the results. In evaluating statistical methodology, it's education that helps you with that. I suggest you let go of some of your arrogance and realize that just because you have AS doesn't mean you know how to design a research study.
04 Nov 2011, 11:42 am
Ettina wrote:
Quote:
My suggestion in regards to #1 is that for the "slightly ____________" choice that is in the direction of an "autistic" answer for a question, make that worth 2/3 or 0.667 points. For the "slightly ________" choice that is in the direction of an "NT or Normal" answer for a question, make that work 1/3 or 0.333 points. I would still score the "Definitely __________" choice that is in the direction of an "autistic" answer 1 point and the "Definitely ___________" choice that is in the direction of an "NT or normal" answer 0 points.
That wouldn't make any real difference. What matters is the comparison between groups, not the total score. If you score it as 0, 1, 2 or 3; or as 0, .33, .67 and 1; the ratios are the same. You'd just make the math harder because fractions are more tricky to add than whole scores. The measurement value of the scale would be exactly the same.
Quote:
My suggestion in regards to #2 is that they should specifically state in the article that the randomly selected controls are neurotypicals who have not been previously diagnosed with a mental disorder. They shouldn't leave it up to the reader to infer that.
I'm pretty sure they did. Not in the abstract, but in the methods section of the full paper. CAn you point out the study you're discussing, so I can check for sure?
Quote:
My suggestion would be try to get the ratio of controls/NTs to AS/HFA subjects closer to 99:1 than 3:1. In the original study, there were 174 randomly selected people for the control group. I am assuming that control = neurotypical. According to the article on the original study, there were 58 people previously diagnosed with AS/HFA. The other two groups don't count (in my opinion) when figuring out the NT:(AS/HFA) ratio.
I am aware that it sounds highly unrealistic to obtain a NT:(AS/HFA) ratio of 99:1 in the sense that if I wanted, for example, 100 people with AS/HFA to take the ASQ since then I would have to get at least 9900 neurotypical people just to meet the 99:1 ratio which would take practically FOREVER (or many years if that many people [who are interested in participating in such a study] can be found. I am just saying that for a future study that pertains to this, get a NT:(AS/HFA) ratio of somewhere around 15:1 or 20:1 or any other value for the ratio that is possible to obtain, but significantly closer to 99:1 than 3:1.
I am aware that it sounds highly unrealistic to obtain a NT:(AS/HFA) ratio of 99:1 in the sense that if I wanted, for example, 100 people with AS/HFA to take the ASQ since then I would have to get at least 9900 neurotypical people just to meet the 99:1 ratio which would take practically FOREVER (or many years if that many people [who are interested in participating in such a study] can be found. I am just saying that for a future study that pertains to this, get a NT:(AS/HFA) ratio of somewhere around 15:1 or 20:1 or any other value for the ratio that is possible to obtain, but significantly closer to 99:1 than 3:1.
The stats actually work slightly better if the two groups are equal size.
If they were pooling results from both groups, that's the only situation where it would help to have a real-life ratio of the two groups. By this, I mean if they had 'the average score for the entire sample' instead of just averages for individual groups. Note that the only time I've ever seen researchers do this is with sex differences - I have never seen an article about any mental disability or difference pool the results like that.
See, the two groups are not drawn from the same 'population', and therefore it makes no sense to lump them together. The population for the autistic sample would be autistic people, and for the controls it would be NTs. What they're trying to do is compare the two samples in order to infer whether or not there are differences in the populations the samples were drawn from. The samples have to be representative of the populations for this to occur. But there is no reason why the two samples pooled together have to be representative of the two populations pooled together, because they're not analyzing pooled data.
Quote:
As for my qualifications, I....uh.....actually have AS, so in my opinion that already makes more qualified to discuss the subject than Cohen will ever be.
Your AS makes you more qualified to say what is going on in the head of one particular AS person - yourself. It does not more qualified to discuss statistical techniques and psychometrics, both of which are highly technical areas of knowledge in which personal experiences aren't very useful for teaching you about that. You do not have as much education in statistical techniques yet as Simon Baron-Cohen has, which makes you less qualified to judge that. Your experience as a person with AS is only going to give you an advantage in theoretical interpretation of the results. In evaluating statistical methodology, it's education that helps you with that. I suggest you let go of some of your arrogance and realize that just because you have AS doesn't mean you know how to design a research study.
My post wasn't at all serious. I have no idea what's actually going on in this thread, as I have not studied any form of statistics, and I don't even know what the ASQ study even is, though I understand the three points discussed in the main topic.
_________________
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