Sex Differences in the Brain: Implications for Explaining Autism

@article{BaronCohen2005SexDI,
  title={Sex Differences in the Brain: Implications for Explaining Autism},
  author={Simon Baron-Cohen and Rebecca C. Knickmeyer and Matthew K. Belmonte},
  journal={Science},
  year={2005},
  volume={310},
  pages={819 - 823}
}
Empathizing is the capacity to predict and to respond to the behavior of agents (usually people) by inferring their mental states and responding to these with an appropriate emotion. Systemizing is the capacity to predict and to respond to the behavior of nonagentive deterministic systems by analyzing input-operation-output relations and inferring the rules that govern such systems. At a population level, females are stronger empathizers and males are stronger systemizers. The “extreme male… 
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Autism: The Empathizing–Systemizing (E‐S) Theory
  • S. Baron-Cohen
  • Psychology
    Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
  • 2009
TLDR
A new theory, the empathizing–systemizing (E‐S) theory, is summarized, which argues two factors are needed to explain the social and nonsocial features of the condition.
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It remains to be tested whether fT is elevated in children who go on to develop an ASD and whether such hyper-masculinization is evident at the level of neuroanatomy and neural function in ASD.
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Factor analyses conducted to assess whether the latent structure of empathizing, systemizing, and autistic traits differs across samples with a high (individuals on the spectrum), medium (first-degree relatives) or low (general population controls) genetic vulnerability to autism suggest a similar latent structure irrespective of genetic vulnerability.
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The “extreme male brain” theory of autism was initially proposed in 2002 by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, who founded the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, UK. Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have…
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References

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The extreme male brain theory of autism
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TLDR
Females scored significantly lower than both male groups on the systemising task, who did not differ significantly from each other, in line with both the E–S theory of autism and the ‘extreme male brain’ theory of Autism.
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