Browsing by Author "Halme, Saara"

Goals: The emphatizing-systemizing theory (E-S theory) states that emphatizing and systemizing helps us understand gender differences in normal population and the causes of autism spectrum disorders. Emphatizing is the capacity to recognize and predict other people's emotions and thoughts and to respond appropriately. Systemizing is the drive to analyze nonagentive systems and create if-then rules in order to predict their behavior. In general, women have a stronger drive to emphatize and men have a stronger drive to systemize. Extreme male brain theory (EMB Theory) is an extension to the E-S theory. According to the EMB Theory, autism is a result of the extreme of the normal male cognitive profile. In recent years, it has been noticed that autistic traits can also be found in normal population. One might expect that the relationship between emphatizing, systemizing and autistic traits would also be found in healthy individuals. However, not much research has been done on this subject and the results have been somewhat mixed. There have also been some weaknesses in the methods used in previous research. In this paper, I examine the relationship between emphatizing, systemizing and autistic traits in normal population using a wide variety of measurements. The hypothesis is that low emphatizing and high systemizing are related to the amount of autistic traits. Method: 3084 participants took part in an online study. The study consisted of questionnaires and computerized tests. Results and Discussion: Low emphatizing and high systemizing were related to the amount of autistic traits. The negative relationship between emphatizing and autistic traits was bigger than the relationship between systemizing and autistic traits. Tests that measured emphatizing and systemizing abilities correlated only weakly to the amount of autistic traits. Low emphatizing was related to autism's social difficulties. High systemizing was related to the interest toward numbers and patterns associated with autism. It seems that emphatizing and systemizing are linked to different parts of the autistic phenotype.