Teaching Journal

Simon Baron-Cohen Another key person in Autism research, same as Framcesca Happe, Simon was the Phd student of Uta Frith in 1985, they collaborate to carry out many clinically psychology research. Simon claimed that two key mental domains, verbal and spatial abilities in both sex differences have been studied, and he suggested that two neglected dimensions for understanding human sex differences are " emphathising" and " systemising". The male brain is a defined psychometrically as those individuals in whom systemising is significantly better than empathising, and the female brain is defined as the opposite cognitive profile. Base on these definitions, autism can be considered as an extreme of the normal male profile. There is increasing psychological evidence for the extreme male brain theory of autism. Source: http://cogsci.bme.hu/~ivady/bscs/read/bc.pdf

Autism is a devastating development disorder affecting at least one in a hundred of children and adults. Although with a strong biological genetic component, diagnosis of autism is still made by behavioral criteria: qualitative impairments in social and communicative development, with restricted and repetitive activities and interests. It is not difficult to find things that people with autism have difficulty with, most autistic people also have general learning difficulties and low IQ. However, we should explore on what autistic people are good at. Thus, we could make use of their unique cognitive style to discover the unrevealed talent or to develop the specific skills. Much progress has been made in the last 15 years to understand the preserved and impaired abilities in autism, including nature of social and communicative handicaps in autism. Primary in this is the notion of the Theory of mind. Theory of Mind is the ability to attribute mental states, beliefs, desires, emotions, ...