Eye expression test by Simon Baron Cohen
Jacoby
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15 Jul 2009, 5:07 am
On one of them, I kept thinking, "Brigit Bardot." (It might have been Cheryl Tiegs or Christie Brinkley, though.)
I was very much aware of these people being professional actors and models. Who decided the "correct" answers? These people weren't "feeling" anything. They were doing their job. There were one or two craggy old guys squinting off into the distance. Maybe the "emotion" was, "It sure is bright out here." Or, "This is my rugged, masculine face. It sure is great to make so much money being photogenic."
Really good point!
15 Jul 2009, 2:42 pm
I think you're correct! AS/HFA may not all score the same. I found a peer-review journal article from Simon Baron-Cohen's website. It listed the standard deviations for both the AS/HFA and the control groups, and the AS/HFA group has more deviation on the eye test. One thing I found interesting, the standard deviations for the Autism Quotient test is about the same in all the groups, but the SD for the Eyes Test is greater in the AS/HFA group.
Because of my curiosity, I went to http://autismresearchcentre.com/tests/e ... _adult.asp , clicked "The 'Reading the mind in the eyes' test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger Syndrome or High-Functioning autism" and found a distribution on page 245.
If you're interested more about those on the spectrum recognizing emotional states, there are more downloadable peer review studies on that webpage.
There's also an issue with using means to represent "typical" scores when you're dealing with a non-Gaussian distribution. The distribution of scores on the eye-test is definitely non-Gaussian because of the hard upper limit on possible scores. Because it's impossible to score higher than 36 you're going to get a lot more people scoring above the mean than people scoring below the mean. Just a few low scores can really drag the mean down. Therefore the AS group can have a lower mean just because of the increased variance.
I think there's a statistically flaw in making claims that the AS group has more trouble reading eyes overall based on a study like this just because the AS group has so much more variance than the control group.
It's true that the mean and the median are not the same, and can be different. Although it doesn't state the medians in the statistics, the mean of AS/HFA for the eyes test was 21.9 with a standard deviation of 6.6. The mean of the student control group was 28.0 with a standard deviation of 3.5.
The difference of the two means is about 6 and the difference between the two standard deviations is about 3. I don't know if that would be great enough of a difference in distribution to say the medians are the same. Yes, without knowing the medians, we can't know for sure, but looking at the data I don't know if it is skewed enough to do that. Even with that, the "weight" of the AS/HFA scores was statistically significant lower than the other control groups. It may not be a cause and effect for everyone with AS/HFA, but looking at the p values, it's significant enough not to be chance alone. You can't prove or say probably true in Science; instead you go with the best explanation.
Another thing I found interesting, the AQ scores have sub-categories in them, including a social skills and communications category. On page 246, they mentioned there was an inverse correlation between how the Student group scored on the Eyes Test and Autism Quotient scores in the social skills and communication categories. I was looking to see if it also mentioned anything about the AS/HFA group and any correlations between the social/communication categories, which I couldn't locate. So I may want to email them about that, because I think that's relevant information.
However, it does say there was an inverse correlation between AQ and Eyes Test scores overall. There was no correlation between IQ and the Eyes Test. I thought that was kind of interesting, almost like reading eyes/mindreading is separate than IQ.
15 Jul 2009, 3:04 pm
24! Phew, I felt like I was sucking. But I suppose some of my answers could have just been lucky guesses. D:
edit: lmao Elderwanda, yes, good point. I didn't realize they were actors, (or at least, I thought they were actors who had been told an emotion and made a face accordingly) but that does change things.
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15 Jul 2009, 3:12 pm
On one of them, I kept thinking, "Brigit Bardot." (It might have been Cheryl Tiegs or Christie Brinkley, though.)
I was very much aware of these people being professional actors and models. Who decided the "correct" answers? These people weren't "feeling" anything. They were doing their job. There were one or two craggy old guys squinting off into the distance. Maybe the "emotion" was, "It sure is bright out here." Or, "This is my rugged, masculine face. It sure is great to make so much money being photogenic."
Interesting point.
I looked a little more into it and it said they used a panel of judges, to determine if each question in the Eyes Test was accurate. It's probably NOT as accurate as the Facial Action Coding System (which would be cool to use, because it analyzes actual facial muscles) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Act ... ing_System
Although some body language differs culture to culture, many of the facial expressions are supposed to be universal. One thing I found interesting is even people born blind have universal facial expressions, even if different intensities. They've also given facial expressions tests to tribes living away from civilization, and found universality. According to the research, many of the facial expressions are supposed to be universal; however the intensity and how often it's socially appropriate can differ (for example, east Asians).
15 Jul 2009, 3:26 pm
Here's something I found interesting on the Universality of Facial Expressions, by the American Psychological Association.
http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/psp9611.pdf
It compared the blind athletes (including those born blind) in the 2004 Paralympic Games with those without impaired vision in the 2004 Olympic Games. It was interesting how there are universal facial expressions out there, regardless of culture and if you were blind at birth.
Then I've found other studies which say the same about universality, even if the intensity and social context of when it's appropriate to express may vary from culture to culture.
15 Jul 2009, 6:48 pm
I think the correlations are statistically significant. They just aren't significant enough to claim that the ability to read facial expressions is the fundamental difference between AS and NT because of the large variance in the AS scores and the general left-skewness to the score distribution. Even though the AS mean is low there's clearly a lot who score much higher than the mean, even higher than the NT mean.
16 Jul 2009, 1:31 pm
Your score: 16
A typical score is in the range 22-30. If you scored over 30,
you are very accurate at decoding a person's facial expressions
around their eyes. A score under 22 indicates you find this quite difficult.
I have a real problem with eyes. Lines around eyes for some reason don't mean anything to my brain.
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16 Jul 2009, 1:45 pm
20 ^_^
It was pretty easy to figure some of them out.
I had also just recently read a little article in Men's Health that talked about facial features etc. and how to decipher them.
(e.g. when someone says OH NO IT'S FINEEE... but their mouth turns into a narrow line and their eyes do something else... it means they actually think it's not fine).
edit:
I also noticed, my first reaction was to label each picture as 'contemplative/thinking/etc.'.
But since that option wasn't always there I figured that'd be a wrong answer.
Last edited by 1234 on 16 Jul 2009, 1:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
16 Jul 2009, 1:48 pm
Your score: 18
A typical score is in the range 22-30. If you scored over 30,
you are very accurate at decoding a person's facial expressions
around their eyes. A score under 22 indicates you find this quite difficult.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The correct answers for the ones you missed are:
1: playful
4: insisting
6: fantasizing
10: cautious
11: regretful
13: anticipating
14: accusing
16: thoughtful
18: decisive
19: tentative
20: friendly
22: preoccupied
23: defiant
24: pensive
29: reflective
30: flirtatious
31: confident
35: nervous
I think I did the same (or a similar) test a few years ago and I got a much lower score, so I'm suprised because I thought I was going to get an even lower one.
To be honest, for most of it, I was guessing. Some of it, I did know, but most of it, I really struggled.
16 Jul 2009, 2:36 pm
It was pretty easy to figure some of them out.
I had also just recently read a little article in Men's Health that talked about facial features etc. and how to decipher them.
(e.g. when someone says OH NO IT'S FINEEE... but their mouth turns into a narrow line and their eyes do something else... it means they actually think it's not fine).
edit:
I also noticed, my first reaction was to label each picture as 'contemplative/thinking/etc.'.
But since that option wasn't always there I figured that'd be a wrong answer.
Which Men's Health article was that?
16 Jul 2009, 3:01 pm
What you say makes sense that the ability to read the eyes is not the fundamental difference between AS and NT's.
I guess it's similar to a theory of mind test they did earlier with HFA vs. Down Syndrome children, which was interesting. Most of the normal children group and Down Syndrome group were able to out perform children with high-functioning autism in a story telling perspective taking test. The HFA had much higher IQ's then the Down Syndrome children, but the DS were able to out do the HFA in social cognition, showing there's more to it than IQ. However, at the same time there were a few HFA individuals who were able to get the test correct, while a few normal and DS children were not. So they said theory of mind can't be the only reason, but may be part of the problem for many of them.
What I'm now curious about is if there's an overall correlation between Eyes Test scores and social skills within the HFA/AS group, after controlling for other variables. Even if there is not a distinctive line between them and NT's, if the ability to read the eyes is related to social skill abilities within the AS/HFA group, then it would be a practical issue to consider, maybe as far as the interventions perspective is concerned. If not, then it wouldn't be so practical but rather a symptom that shows up only after evaluating large populations.
Then I've also heard that eye tracking devices have found adult AS look at the eyes less in social interaction than NT's do, so I think it is possible that the overall mean scores being lower than the NT's may just be a side effect of not making as much eye contact during the appropriate times.
16 Jul 2009, 3:19 pm
I think the "Mind in the Eyes Test" is poorly created. I usually do very well on it, because I'm given choices as to which emotion is being shown. With those choices, I'm able to correctly guess the answer, but if you were to just ask me which emotion the eyes showed without giving me choices, I'd do very poorly on the test. One reason is because I don't get how eyes show emotion. I use tone of voice to determine mood 99% of the time. The other reason is that I, like most Aspies, only experience the strong emotions of anger, happiness, upset/frustration, and fear/anxiety. The eyes test asks for very subtle emotions, like "tentative" and "insisting," emotions I don't experience.
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