Two new theories of autism: hyper-systemising and assortative mating

Two new theories of autism: hyper-systemising and assortative mating.

T he autistic spectrum comprises four subgroups: Asperger’s syndrome (AS), 2 and high, medium, and low functioning autism. They all share the phenotype of social difficulties and obsessional interests. In AS, the individual has normal or above average IQ and no language delay. In the three autism subgroups there is invariably some degree of language delay, and the level of functioning is indexe...

The hyper-systemizing, assortative mating theory of autism.

The hyper-systemizing theory of autism proposes that the systemizing mechanism is set too high in people with autism. As a result, they can only cope with highly lawful systems, and cannot cope with systems of high variance or change (such as the social world of other minds). They appear 'change-resistant'. This proposal extends the extreme male brain theory of autism. Finally, evidence is revi...

Educational Assortative Mating in Two Generations:

Assortative mating without assortative preference.

Assortative mating--marriage of a man and a woman with similar social characteristics--is a commonly observed phenomenon. In the existing literature in both sociology and economics, this phenomenon has mainly been attributed to individuals' conscious preferences for assortative mating. In this paper, we show that patterns of assortative mating may arise from another structural source even if in...

Assortative Mating and Linkage Disequilibrium

Assortative mating has been suggested to result in an increase in heritability and additive genetic variance through an increase in linkage disequilibrium. The impact of assortative mating on linkage disequilibrium was explicitly examined for the two-locus model of Wright (1921) and two selective assortative mating models. For the Wright (1921) model, when the proportion of assortative mating w...