Simon Baron-Cohen's current views.

Post Reply New Topic

Wrongplanet includes some people who feel Simon Baron-Cohen has distanced himself from his systemising and extreme male brain theories.

He told me (21/3/09) that
- he is continuing to test the extreme male brain (EMB) theory that autism/AS is an extreme of the Type S brain. the Type S brain is where systemizing is stronger than empathy. in his terminology, the Type S profile is described as S>E, and the extreme Type S is S>>E (i.e., systemizing is intact or above average, whilst empathy is below average).
- he wishes to clarify that this theory says nothing about sex drive, violence, or machismo. (these male-linked characteristics may be more related to current testosterone, whereas S and E appear to be related to foetal testosterone).
- finally, he told me that believes the EMB theory is still relatively young and that in science it often takes many years for enough data to accumulate to evaluate a theory. For example, he is only now beginning to test the neural correlates of S and E using neuroimaging, and to test if at the neural level the brain in autism/AS is an extreme of the neurotypical brain.


Do others have any comments on current research and theories out there - particularly in relation to autism/AS as a problem of too much systemising, and/or of inability or too much pain in empathising?

Best wishes
JC
http://unlearningasperger.blogspot.com

Nothing new here and SBC has not `distanced` himself from the male brain theory-he merely told you that it needs further work in brain imaging to ensure its accepted by the medical establishment.
If you want to try to undermine the EMB theory you will need some real evidence not just reading something into peoples words which does not exist-in a very Extreme Female Brain way...

There seems to be an assumption here that systemizing and empathy are opposite poles on a single continuum, like large or small feet.

I can't see any basis for that assumption. I think it's more likely that systemizing and empathy are two unrelated traits, like height and musical talent.

I don't think anybody's going to come up with anything of value operating on the assumption that aspies lack empathy. Sounds to me like he's known too many "Asperger's experts" and not enough aspies.

The aspie's inability to perceive and transmit nonverbal cues to emotional states should not be assumed to indicate an inability to understand and experience emotional states.

Somebody tell Simon that Mr. Spock is a fictional character.

I really don't agree with Baron-Cohen. I think more research needs to be done with asperger's and women. I don't think we have an extreme male brain. Many of us (like me) have high verbal skills and very low spatial skills. I wonder if he ever plans to test his theories with women.

Does not he think we hate people>

Isn't he the one who says we are cold and aloof because he studied kids who might not be able to say, I APPEAR ALOOF BUT I AM NOT.

I don't have a problem with the man personally, but I think he is a bit stuck on the idea and can't see the leaves for the trees, when in realty it is his construct and is not really well defined or provable.

Also, people are taking this to be fact based on his authority, when it is a loose theory based on some assumptions. Prove those assumptions first, then we’ll talk.

Testosterone during gestation is one thing, but 'male brain' is quite another. There could be other conditions related to testosterone during gestation that are not linked to ASD or a 'male brain'.

I don't think he is that simplistic.

The problem is psychiatry is mostly pseudo-science. They are lapsed physicians who practice the witchcraft of arbitrary checklists. He is trying to cross over a bit to more rigorous functional study, which is commendable. Unfortunately the two make for an unhappy marriage natrually.

If empathy is all that common in the non-aspie general population, I sure haven't noticed it. I'd just say humans lack empathy.

Fake empathy, the ability to perceive other people's emotional states and use non-verbal cues to manipulate them, that's very common. We got salesmen, politicians, lawyers, all them people who are popular and admired and respected without much reason.

Only an awful lot of those people are males, I'd say at least half.

Simon ain't making much sense.

I agree completely.

I just took a test recently, out of pure curiosity, to see if I had a "male" or a "female" brain. I totally flunked out on the spatial part of the test. Of course, I did very badly on the verbal part too; both the verbal part and the spatial part of the test were timed, so I think I panicked...(I hate timed tests). So, it looks like I have a "neuter" brain, as I was below the average for both men and women on every part.

What I don´t understand is why he uses the terms "male" and "female" in the first place. I just don´t buy the fact that men are supposed to be more logical, and women are naturally more empathic. I find these ideas quite insulting. Why don´t they just use the terms "systematizing" and "empathizing"- (or "S" and "E")- without putting male or female into the picture? I believe that girls are socialized to be more empathetic than boys. I noticed this for much of my life, and even wondered about it.

I think that many of the stereotypes of the male brain theory are also turning out to be false; (unless there´s another form of autism, as yet unstudied??) I am not interested in parts of objects, machinery, taking things apart and putting them back together, etc. I am not even that interested in rote learning or memorizing facts. I am an artist, so I have always been more interested in form, expression, concepts, and even human emotion. It would be unwise to say that artists can´t be autistic, I would think, just because we don´t fit a certain stereotype.

On the other hand, I do use logic and systematizing skills to figure out social situations. I even discovered my own logical system in doing the face reading part of the male/female brain test, and did quite well actually...far better than the 1st time I tried one such test! (That was also the only section of the test that wasn´t timed). If that´s the kind of thing he means by "systematizing", maybe he should be more specific.

Well I say that Simon Baron-Cohen should be free to have what ever ideas he likes. I think that as long as he behaves as a serious and morally decent scientist then he should be free to think what ever thoughts he likes. He is not free to act on a poorly proven hypothesis and then start to do things to the AS community, I think in SBC's case that we can trust him more than some researchers whose I have a deep seated distrust of.

I say that theories are very right, they can be proved wrong and we can assume that a so called "correct theory" is a hypothesis which has not been proven wrong yet. I think that if the greatest minds in AS & autism (SBC, Attwood and some of the WP biologists) were to write a text book on autism then it is possible that in 200 years time that much of the book would be viewed as being wrong.

I say that science advances by making theories, testing the theories and then moving onto new theories.

One early theory was that mercury caused autism, this hypothesis has been tested. All the trustworthy research which I have seen suggests that no link between mercury and autism exists, so we have made some progress towards the final truth by ruling out a false lead.

Another theory might be that only people in the US get AS, this hypothesis can be very quickly tested by looking for an aspie outside the USA. I think that within seconds that this hypothesis can be shot down in flames. The fact that the hypothesis is odd does not matter, the testing of the hypothesis does not harm the interests of humans and in terms of science it is more valid than some of the work which has been done on the subject of AS.

Whitetiger is correct to suggest that SBC should try out his ideas with female aspies, if he is looking at the idea of the supermale brain then it is important that he should study the minds and brains of women who has AS or autism.

I have no idea if we will ever reach the final truth, but I say that there is nothing wrong with people trying out all manner of theories as long as.

1. They do the research in an ethical manner, and take care not to harm the interests of the AS & autism community (or the NT general public)

2. Admit that the theories are just theories, and not attempt on the back of the untested and outlandish theories try to sell any snake oil cures.

3. I have some other demands on researchers but the first two are the main ones.

I don't hold with the Extreme Male Brain theory because....

a. I feel it's more than a bit insulting to women.
b. I'm less like a footy player full of testosterone than most men. If anything I've got a stronger feminine side
c. It assumes that just because aspies don't show emotions well and don't read them well, that we don't feel them.

I definitely agree with this - I think it skewers the public perception of these ideas, which a lot of people already seem to believe are set in stone. I've even heard comments along the lines of, 'all men are a little bit autistic' which I'm sure can't be the point of this research... can it??

I've never enjoyed scientific attempts to seperate out 'male' and 'female' characteristics.

Does anybody have any information about Baron Cohen's thoughts about autistic women with regard to his theories?

An issue I have with the current theories is that they don't take the statistical variance into account enough. That higher systemizing and lower empathizing scores occur in the mean distribution of the AS population compared to the NT population isn't in question. The issue is that the mean statistics don't tell the whole story because a single counterexample will discredit the theory IMO.

The fact that AS people who are not hyper-systemizers exist, I think, shows that the syndrome is not caused by having a systemizing ("male") brain. It's more likely caused, IMO, by something else that just happens to lead to a statistically higher prevalence of systemizing ability over empathizing ability. To sum it all up I think the variance is too large to draw a causal relation.

I completely agree. I favour the hyperfunctionality theory (described here: http://frontiersin.org/neuroscience/paper/10.3389/neuro.01/1.1.006.2007/) - that our brains create too many neuronal links and we therefore process too much, and the systemising is a type of compensation strategy we use to deal with this. This makes a lot of sense to me.

It makes sense to me, too.

It's true that some of us are artists more than scientists, though it's possible that that could tie in with fetal testosterone, too (creativity).

My main concern is the EQ. He's the only one who thinks conversational skill is a part of empathy, and we're the ones who have the hardest time with conversation. Talk about a set up.

I don't think his views would matter so much if the media didn't pay so much attention to him. Unfortunately he's very good at promoting his ideas: more than he should be, I think, given what he's working on.

And the final question is: is this just his way of earning a living with us as subjects, or are we going to actually get something out of this at some point?