The E-S theory does not stereotype. Rather, it seeks to explain why individuals are typical or atypical for their sex.
It may be true in the case of autism that if you start off with a deficit in terms of empathy or mind reading, you've just got more time to devote to understanding the world by systemizing.
Empathy is a skill like any other human skill - and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.
My theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.
Empathy is about two people - two people meeting, getting to know each other and tuning in to what the other person is thinking and feeling.
People with autism flourish in domains where the information is consistent and predictable, and struggle most in domains where the information is ambiguous and unlawful.
Hundreds of studies of various cultures have proven that, on average, boys play more than girls with constructional toys like Lego and toy cars, and girls play more with dolls.
If you have high-functioning autism, you may well have a lot of autistic traits but if you've got a particular lifestyle where it's possibly an advantage to be leading a solitary lifestyle and be quite obsessive, you're clearly able to function and maybe even make valuable contributions in your work, so arguably you don't need a diagnosis.
Maybe because I had a sister with a disability I was already sensitised to and fascinated by people who think or develop differently.
Autistic peoples' excellent attention to detail means they may make fewer mistakes, and their narrow focus may mean that they are not satisfied until a task is completed.
With the right support and reasonable adjustments, autistic people make wonderful employees.
Genes are thought to contribute a certain amount to the cause of autism but it's not 100 per cent. It might be about 60 per cent genetic. So there are going to be environmental factors that mediate the impact of autism.
It is possible that by studying autism we'll learn about the nature of talent. Supposedly there's no connection between scientific talent and autism, but if we look closely, we find a very basic connection.
I'm not satisfied with the term 'evil.' We've inherited this word... and we use it to express our abhorrence when people do awful things, usually acts of cruelty, but I don't think it's anything more than another word for doing something bad.
Autism typically means a person may not be fully aware of the consequences of their actions, or understand the consequences of their behaviour on others.
Empathy is a necessary step for truth and reconciliation.
If you have a child with autism, and he or she has good intelligence, with no delay in language learning maybe there is an advantage to autism as well? Maybe it gives them a better understanding of mathematics, or science? After all, the essence of science and the essence of autism is to notice patterns that others have not noticed.
Brains come in different types and they're all normal.
What we want is that one day every workplace will be diverse - we already encourage that with gender and ethnicity, but the next frontier is neurodiversity and it will become ordinary. People won't think twice about it.
Baby girls, as young as 12 months old, respond more empathically to the distress of other people, showing greater concern through more sad looks, sympathetic vocalisations and comforting. This echoes what you find in adulthood: more women report frequently sharing the emotional distress of their friends.
