1900 The Extreme Male Brain

If you have a child with Asperger’s or autism, you may want to look at an interview at Medscape.com with Simon Baron-Cohen. Here’s the beginning of an interesting article:

Medscape: You advance the proposition that people with autism have an imbalance in 2 cognitive capabilities, which makes them behave as though they are, at least in the cognitive realm, much more male than female.[1] What are these fundamental differences between men and women that may help us understand the psychology of autism and Asperger's disorder?

Simon Baron-Cohen, PhD, MPhil: In the general population, you find that, on average, males have a stronger drive to systemize and females have a stronger drive to empathize. Those are the 2 cognitive processes we've been focusing on to try to understand autism and why it should be more common among boys than girls. We've found that people on the autistic spectrum show an exaggeration of the male profile.

Includes comments on fetal testosterone and "assortative mating" (both parents in computer field or both parents engineers).

autism
Asperger's