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Autism occurs more often in families of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians

Authors:
Simon Baron-Cohen at University of Cambridge
Simon Baron-Cohen
Patrick F Bolton at King's College London
Patrick F Bolton
Sally Wheelwright at University of Sussex
Sally Wheelwright
Victoria Scahill
Victoria Scahill
Victoria Scahill
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Abstract The study reported here tests a prediction that autism should occur more often in families of individuals whose occupation requires advanced folk physics but with no requirement of good folk psychology. Physics, engineering, and mathematics are paradigm examples of such occupations. Students in Cambridge University, studying one of these 3 subjects, were screened for cases of autism in their families. Relative to a control group of students studying literature, autism occurred significantly more often in families of students in the fields of physics, engineering, and mathematics. ,3
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1
This paper appeared in Autism, 1998, 2, 296-301.
Autism occurs more often in families of
physicists, engineers, and mathematicians.
Simon Baron-Cohen
?
, Patrick Bolton, Sally Wheelwright, Victoria Scahill
Liz Short, Genevieve Mead, and Alex Smith
Departments of Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry,
University of Cambridge, Downing St,
Cambridge, CB2 3EB, UK.
?
To whom correspondence should be addressed.
2
Abstract
The study reported here tests a prediction that autism should occur more often in
families of individuals whose occupation requires advanced folk physics but with no
requirement of good folk psychology. Physics, engineering, and mathematics are
paradigm examples of such occupations. Students in Cambridge University,
studying one of these 3 subjects, were screened for cases of autism in their families.
Relative to a control group of students studying literature, autism occurred
significantly more often in families of students in the fields of physics, engineering,
and mathematics.
3
Autism is considered to be the most severe of the childhood psychiatric disorders. It is
strongly heritable (Bailey et al., 1995) and is diagnosed on the basis of abnormalities in
social development, communication, and imagination (APA, 1994). First-degree relatives
of children with autism are at raised risk not only of autism itself, but also of a lesser
variant (or broader phenotype) of autism (Baron-Cohen & Hammer, 1997; Bolton et al.,
1994). One model proposes that the broader phenotype might be characterised as
involving deficits in ‘folk psychology’ (social understanding) in the presence of intact or
superior abilities in ‘folk physics’ (understanding inanimate objects) (Baron-Cohen, in
press).
This study builds on the notion that cognition has a domain-specific structure (Barkow,
Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; Gelman & Hirschfield, 1994), i.e., that cognitive domains
exist in the human brain, as a result of natural selection. Two such basic cognitive
domains are folk psychology (Baron-Cohen, 1995; Gergely, Nadasdy, Gergely & Biro,
1995) and folk physics (Baillargeon, Kotovsky & Needham, 1995; Leslie & Keeble,
1987). These domains are thought to reflect inborn attentional biases in the infant brain to
particular classes of information (social vs inanimate events, respectively). Such
attentional biases facilitate the infant brain learning about these specific aspects of the
environment.
The evidence that children with autism are impaired in the development of folk
psychology is plentiful (Baron-Cohen, 1995; Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 1985). This
4
impaired folk psychology appears to be universal in autism, even amongst adults with
autism who have otherwise normal intelligence, though subtle tests of mind-reading are
needed to reveal this (Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore & Robertson, 1997). For this
reason, autism has been characterised as involving degrees of “mindblindness” (Baron-
Cohen, 1995).
Evidence that in such children folk physics is intact or superior comes from the
following sources: they have a good understanding of object properties and physical
causality (Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 1986); they understand mechanisms such as
cameras (Leekam & Perner, 1991; Leslie & Thaiss, 1992); and their obsessional interests
often centre on machines, other physical systems (such as the planets), or systems with
mathematical/spatial regularities (such as transport networks and calenders) (Baron-
Cohen, in press).
Evidence that the broader phenotype of autism may be characterised in terms of folk
physics being more advanced than folk psychology comes from a recent study of the
occupations of the first and second degree relatives of children with autism. Both fathers
and grandfathers of such children were disproportionately represented in occupations
linked to engineering. In a sample of 919 families with a child with autism, 28.4% had
either a father or grandfather who was an engineer, vs only 15% of control group families
(Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Stott, Bolton & Goodyer, 1997). In the present study, we
investigated if autism was more common in the families of those people who work in
fields which demand good folk physics but which do not necessarily demand good folk
5
psychology. Specifically, we tested the prediction that autism would be more common in
the families of those working in the object-centred fields of engineering, physics, and
mathematics, relative to those working in the humanities.
Method
We sampled students in Cambridge University who work in these fields. We compared
641 students studying one of the 3 subjects (maths, n = 275, engineering, n = 266, or
physics, n = 100), with 652 students studying literature (English, n=480, French, n=172).
We asked them to report, by questionnaire, on the incidence of the following 6 conditions
in their family: autism, anorexia, schizophrenia, language delay, manic-depression, and
Down’s Syndrome. Family was defined as siblings, parents (these both being 1st degree
relatives), parents’ siblings (2nd degree relatives), or first cousins (3rd degree relatives).
More distant relatives were not considered.
Results
Results are shown in Table 1. To minimize the risk of statistically significant results
occuring due to multiple testing, two tests were carried out of first: autism (predicted to
be more common in the engineers/maths/physics families); and manic depression
(predicted to be more common in the English/French families, based on earlier findings
(Andreasen, 1987; Claridge, Pryor & Watkins, 1990). Both predictions were confirmed.
Only 1 case of autism was found in the English/French (E-F) group (this individual being
6
a 3rd degree relative), whereas 6 cases of autism were found in the
Maths/Physics/Engineering (M-P-E) group (of whom 2 were a 1st degree, 3 were a 2nd
degree, and 1 was a 3rd degree, relative). Comparing 6 in 9428 (relatives of the M-P-E
students) to 1 in 9829 (E-F students) is significantly different (Fisher’s Exact Probability
Test, p = 0.049). Regarding manic-depression, twice as many cases were found in the
families of those students studying literature. Comparing 50 in 9428 (M-P-E group) with
100 in 9829 (E-F group) is also significant (Chi Square = 14.15, 1df, p = 0.0002). A
subsequent analysis confirmed that the two types of students did not differ in incidence
rates of the other 4 conditions, or in terms of how many 1st, 2nd, or 3rd degree relatives
they had (all p > 0.7).
insert Table 1 here
Discussion
This shows that, as predicted, there is a significant association between individuals whose
cognitive strengths lie in the domain of folk physics (indexed by working in the fields of
mathematics, engineering, and physics) and having a biological relative with autism. This
result could reflect reporting biases between the two groups, but this is far-fetched.
Rather, the association fits the prediction derived from a theory of the broader cognitive
phenotype of autism. Future work should validate this by verifying diagnosis of relatives
rather than relying solely on report.
7
Table 1: Number of students with an affected relative
Subject
studied
Autism
Lang
Delay
Schizo
phreni
a
Manic
Depress
Anore
x
Down’s
No. of
1st deg
relatives
No of
2nd deg
relatives
No of
3rd deg
relatives
Total
No of
relatives
Maths,
Engineer
or
Physics
(n=641)
6*
32
17
50
24
6
2238
2880
4310
9428
English
or
French
Literature
(n=652)
1
43
20
100**
21
4
2401
3007
4421
9829
* Maths/Engineering/Physics significantly higher than English/French
** Maths/Engineering/Physics significantly lower than English/French
8
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Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind
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  • Feb 1995
In Mindblindness, Simon Baron-Cohen presents a model of the evolution and development of "mindreading." He argues that we mindread all the time, effortlessly, automatically, and mostly unconsciously. It is the natural way in which we interpret, predict, and participate in social behavior and communication. We ascribe mental states to people: states such as thoughts, desires, knowledge, and intentions. Building on many years of research, Baron-Cohen concludes that children with autism, suffer from "mindblindness" as a result of a selective impairment in mindreading. For these children, the world is essentially devoid of mental things. Baron-Cohen develops a theory that draws on data from comparative psychology, from developmental, and from neuropsychology. He argues that specific neurocognitive mechanisms have evolved that allow us to mindread, to make sense of actions, to interpret gazes as meaningful, and to decode "the language of the eyes." Bradford Books imprint
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Does the autistic child have a metarepresentational deficit?
Article
  • Oct 1991
  • COGNITION
This study examines the claim that autistic children lack a "theory of mind" because of an inability to metarepresent. We argue that if autistic children have a "metarepresentational" deficit in Leslie's (1987, 1988) sense of the term, then they should have difficulty not only with mental representations such as false beliefs, but also with external representations such as photographs. Autistic children's understanding of photographic representations was tested using Zaitchik's (1990) task. This task is modelled on the false belief task (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985; Wimmer & Perner, 1983) but involves "false" photographs where a photographic representation does not conform with the current state of the real world. Like Zaitchik (1990) we found that normal 3 and 4-year-olds found this task as difficult as the false belief task. In sharp contrast, however, the autistic children in our study passed the photograph task but failed the false belief task. As both tasks require the ability to decouple, this evidence challenges the view that autistic children lack "metarepresentational" ability in Leslie's sense. However, the results leave open the question of whether autistic children have a metarepresentational ability in the different sense of the term intended by Pylyshyn (1978), that is, representing the relationship between a representation and what it represents.
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Creativity and Mental Illness: Prevalence Rates in Writers and Their First-Degree Relatives
Article
  • Nov 1987
Rates of mental illness were examined in 30 creative writers, 30 matched control subjects, and the first-degree relatives of both groups. The writers had a substantially higher rate of mental illness, predominantly affective disorder, with a tendency toward the bipolar subtype. There was also a higher prevalence of affective disorder and creativity in the writers' first-degree relatives, suggesting that these traits run together in families and could be genetically mediated. Both writers and control subjects had IQs in the superior range; the writers excelled only on the WAIS vocabulary subtest, confirming previous observations that intelligence and creativity are independent mental abilities.
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