Autism and Masculinity

Very interesting article on the BBC Web site last week, about research into high levels of testosterone in fetuses that would later become children with autistic traits.

Eight years of research show a fairly high correlation (20% in the world of scientific research is very high indeed). However, it’s just a beginning: The link is only to autistic traits, not the disorder itself, and there is no way to know at this stage whether testosterone causes the traits, or is just correlated for any of a number of possible reasons.

This furthers the interesting hypothesis of the well-known British autism expert, Simon Baron-Cohen (no relation to Sasha) that symptoms of the disorder, such as highly analytic and logical thinking, social isolation, and others, are an expression of male thought patterns in extreme, unhealthy form. He thinks that perhaps the testosterone creates a brain in which this is inevitable. More specifically, Baron-Cohen says...

… the hormone [testosterone] could be affecting the brain through altering neural cell connectivity and chemicals that carry messages, known as neurotransmitters.

The team is now planning to follow up its study to test direct links between autism and testosterone levels in foetuses. The group will use Denmark's archive of 90,000 amniocentesis samples and its register of psychiatric diagnoses.

The work is connected to Professor Baron-Cohen's hypothesis suggesting that autism is a version of the extreme male brain.

He said that although researchers had tested this theory at the psychological level, the new studies meant it could now be tested at the biological level.

Yawning and Autism

An interesting little insight into the minds of autistic children: They aren't susceptible to "contagious" yawns the way neurotypical folk are. Go to this page on one of my favorite blogs, Mind Hacks, to read the summary of an article in the journal of the British Psychological Society, and to get links to the original article.

Autistic Girls Essentially Different from Autistic Boys?

If you've been enjoying my many earlier posts on my work this summer with teens with Asperger's disorder, I have a nice link for you. The New York Times Sunday Magazine has an interesting article on the gender differences within autism, focusing especially on Asperger's patients.

Now, it's been a mother of a week, and I'm supposed to be resting today, so I'm not going to launch into one of my usual psychology screeds right now. I need to get outside and enjoy the gorgeous summer day, and try to do as little as possible today.

I'll just say that the piece appears basically well-balanced. There are exceptions; in the seven weeks I've been working directly with kids with Asperger's, I've seen various examples that contradict some of the generalizations the author makes about boys or girls with the disorder. But even she admits that the field is still making up its mind about the larger facts on gender differences. Those points she does state firmly seem reasonably well substantiated. Moreover, the questions she raises are quite interesting and have important implications.

Enjoy!

Theory of Mind

First things first: It's still survey week at Thinkulous. I'd love it if you helped me out by taking the survey via the link at the top-right-hand side of this page.

Interesting post recently on Mind Hacks, one of my favorite blogs (part of me is a huge psych geek). Since I've been writing about this recently, I thought I'd post an excerpt that explains theory of mind rather well in a brief way:

People with autism or related conditions are often poor at both deception and recognising deception in others. It's not always the case, but it's quite a common attribute.

Baron-Cohen's article explores what we know about some of the differences in autistic thinking, and what might be so different that an effective understanding of deception becomes almost impossible.

He argues that a key skill is 'meta-representation', the ability to think about other thoughts, imaginary scenarios or abstract principles in yourself or others.

The key is that it's not just thinking or imagining, it's being able to think about thinking or imagining.

When this specifically involves thinking about what other people are thinking, understanding their perspective, it is often called 'theory of mind'.

You can see why this is a key skill in deception. You need to have a theory or understanding of what the other person is thinking or is likely to think, to work out how to hide the real state of the world from them.

I recommend the post and much of the site to those who like to explore why and how we think and feel what we do.