Simon Baron-Cohen's Theory

Simon Baron-Cohen and Sally Wheelwright conducted an experiment involving 2000 families that lived in the United Kingdom. Half of these families had a child with autism. Autism is a developmental condition in which individuals have difficulty communicating and interacting with others and display obsessive behaviors. Autism limits one’s abilities to read others’ emotions and to form relationships, which in turn may reduce one’s chance of having children and passing on one’s genes (Baron-Cohen). When they were asking these families questions they found that 12.5 percent of the fathers with children who had autism were engineers. Only 5 percent of fathers with children without autism were engineers. They researched more into the individuals in the experiment. They uncovered that 21.2 percent of the grandfathers whose grandchild has autism were engineers.
People with Asperger’s also scored higher on a test that dealt with attention to detail. Attention to detail is a prerequisite for good systemizing. Baron-Cohen found out that at the University of Cambridge math students were nine times more likely to report having former diagnosis of autism.
The link between autism and systemizing also has Baron-Cohen wondering why autism is more common in boys than girls. He found out that systemizing in a lot stronger in men than women. They investigated if high levels of testosterone in a fetus is masculinizing the brain of humans and animals. He studied 235 pregnant women in a procedure that used a long needle to sample the amniotic fluid that surrounds the fetus. He found out that the more testosterone surround the fetus in the womb, the stronger the child’s later interest in systems and attention to detail. Which are a number of traits associated with