Reading the Mind in the Eyes

Taking the Eyes Test is an interesting way to spend a few minutes on the internet. You might want to take the test first, and then read about it below.

Is this person playful, comforting, irritated, or bored?

You can take the test here.

Here is a paper on the Eyes Test by Simon Baron-Cohen, who has been doing the most intriguing research in autism these past couple of decades.


"In a broad autism phenotype study, parents of children with autism spectrum disorders performed more poorly than comparison participants (Baron-Cohen and Hammer, 1997). In a series of subsequent studies aimed at examining individual differences in mentalizing among healthy adults, Baron-Cohen and colleagues demonstrated that the Eyes Test, in conjunction with other measures, discriminates between individuals with a propensity for humanities from individuals with a physical sciences orientation (Billington et al., 2007)."

Peterson and Miller (2012) found that performance on the Eyes Test was better predicted by Verbal IQ (WASI vocab; TLC figurative language) than by facial processing (CFMT), which calls into doubt just what the test is actually measuring:

 

 

 

I will be posting more in the future about the work of Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen. I'm a far bigger fan of his than I am of his cousin. A profile worth reading is here.