Contrary to the theory that neurological sex differences and autism both involve the same tradeoff of systemic versus empathic thinking, I found complex differences. It turned out that men were more interested in technology and more disagreeable, whereas autistic people had a narrower focus on details, were more introverted, more socially challenged, and had stronger sensory sensitivity.
I agree with your conclusion that the extreme male brain hypothesis is not very convincing. However, a slightly modified version of this hypothesis seems quite likely to me: that autism shifts traits in directions where males on average have higher scores than females. This would explain the prevalence of males in the mildest forms of autism, those associated with common variants, as opposed to the more severe forms of autism associated with rare de novo variants.
Anecdotally, my personal impression is that difficulties in contextualising (which is of course related to the "detail interest" axis you showed) is a major feature of autism. I wonder what you think of John Nerst's contextualiser/decoupler dichotomy? It was proposed for ordinary people, but I wonder if it measures something similar to your "detail interest" axis? It is presented in brief in the link below.
Finally, if there is indeed a link between "detail interest" and "contextualiser", because in humans context is very social, could it help to link the two different parts of autism, the one about social challenges and the one about detail focus?
Super interesting, thanks for the post!
I agree with your conclusion that the extreme male brain hypothesis is not very convincing. However, a slightly modified version of this hypothesis seems quite likely to me: that autism shifts traits in directions where males on average have higher scores than females. This would explain the prevalence of males in the mildest forms of autism, those associated with common variants, as opposed to the more severe forms of autism associated with rare de novo variants.
Anecdotally, my personal impression is that difficulties in contextualising (which is of course related to the "detail interest" axis you showed) is a major feature of autism. I wonder what you think of John Nerst's contextualiser/decoupler dichotomy? It was proposed for ordinary people, but I wonder if it measures something similar to your "detail interest" axis? It is presented in brief in the link below.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7cAsBPGh98pGyrhz9/decoupling-vs-contextualising-norms
Finally, if there is indeed a link between "detail interest" and "contextualiser", because in humans context is very social, could it help to link the two different parts of autism, the one about social challenges and the one about detail focus?