This afternoon after I finished work I had the pleasure of meeting Mr William Church an adult on the Autism Spectrum at the Univeristy of Queensland. I had quite a chat with William and I asked him to share his comments about what he knows about the Autism Spectrum. Please find his comments below.
"Cognitive
ability: Asperger's tend to score higher on verbal intelligence as a composite
on the Wechsler - this being more so males with "high functioning"
autism. they also tend to score higher in non-verbal abstract reasoning as
measured by the untimed raven's progressive matrices test.
re: Masculinity and hormones.
One of the theories I've encountered is the "male brained" account of autism. the idea is that pre-natal androgen levels tend to affect neural development. One of the signs is the index-ring finger ratio, which in autistic people tends to indicate excess pre-natal testosterone. A ratio of 1.00 is typical for women, and in the order of 0.97 for men. I happen to have a ratio of about 0.89.
In terms of cognitive abilities I've read that the effect of high pre-natal testosterone for women and men may be the opposite. In men lower testosterone tends to be optimal for more male tasks like math and spatial ability. Whereas in women higher testosterone correlates with higher math and spatial ability. this seems to be consistent with research which shows that men with autism tend to score higher on verbal components of IQ tests, whereas women with asperger's tend to be more competitive in spatial ability and performance tasks".
re: Masculinity and hormones.
One of the theories I've encountered is the "male brained" account of autism. the idea is that pre-natal androgen levels tend to affect neural development. One of the signs is the index-ring finger ratio, which in autistic people tends to indicate excess pre-natal testosterone. A ratio of 1.00 is typical for women, and in the order of 0.97 for men. I happen to have a ratio of about 0.89.
In terms of cognitive abilities I've read that the effect of high pre-natal testosterone for women and men may be the opposite. In men lower testosterone tends to be optimal for more male tasks like math and spatial ability. Whereas in women higher testosterone correlates with higher math and spatial ability. this seems to be consistent with research which shows that men with autism tend to score higher on verbal components of IQ tests, whereas women with asperger's tend to be more competitive in spatial ability and performance tasks".
