Autism and Talent: the Cognitive and Neural Basis of Systemizing

Overview

Journal Dialogues Clin Neurosci

Specialty Neurology

Date 2018 Feb 6

PMID 29398930

Citations 19

Authors

Simon Baron-Cohen

Michael V Lombardo

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

In 2003, we proposed the hypersystemizing theory of autism. The theory proposes that the human mind possesses a systemizing mechanism (SM) that helps identify lawful regularities (often causal) that govern the input-operation-output workings of a system. The SM can be tuned to different levels, from low to high, with a normal distribution of individual differences in how strongly people search for such input-operation-out-put regularities in any data that is systemizable. Evidence suggests that people with autism are on average hypersystemizers, scoring higher than average on the systemizing quotient and on performance tests of systemizing. In this article, we consider the neural basis behind the SM, since there has been little consideration of the brain basis of systemizing. Finally, we discuss directions for future work in this field.

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