Asunto(s)
Hiperplasia Suprarrenal Congénita/psicología , Andrógenos/metabolismo , Trastorno Autístico/psicología , Cognición/fisiología , Hiperplasia Suprarrenal Congénita/metabolismo , Hiperplasia Suprarrenal Congénita/fisiopatología , Trastorno Autístico/metabolismo , Trastorno Autístico/fisiopatología , Femenino , Humanos , MasculinoRESUMEN
It has been hypothesised that autism is an extreme version of the male brain, caused by high levels of prenatal testosterone (Baron-Cohen 1999). To test this proposal, associations were assessed between three visuo-spatial tasks and prenatal testosterone, indexed in second-to-fourth digit length ratios (2D:4D). The study included children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD (N = 28), and chronological as well as mental age matched typically-developing children (N = 31). While the group with ASD outperformed the control group at Mental Rotation and Figure-Disembedding, these group differences were not related to differences in prenatal testosterone level. Previous findings of an association between Targeting and 2D:4D were replicated in typically-developing children and children with ASD. The implications of these results for the extreme male brain (EMB) theory of autism are discussed.