Simon Baron-Cohen Research Articles

Impact of LEGO® Based Therapy on Skills Development and Quality of Life in People with Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

This research sets out to evaluate the impact of LEGO® Based Therapy on the development of skills and quality of life for people with neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as for those close to them. Widely used in the United States and the United Kingdom for almost 20 years, LEGO® Based Therapy was developed by Daniel Le Goff, psychologist licensed in Florida and New Jersey who has practiced for over 20 years with children, adolescents and adults with developmental disabilities, including autism, Asperger's syndrome and congenital disabilities, as well as acquired and traumatic brain injuries. Daniel Le Goff has extensive experience as a consultant and expert witness, as well as in direct clinical services, including applied behaviour analysis, cognitive behaviour therapy and cognitive rehabilitation. In 2008, Gina Gómez de la Cuesta completed her PhD at the Centre for Autism Research at the University of Cambridge, where she led and evaluated LEGO®® Based Therapy under the supervision of Daniel LEGO®ff, Simon Baron-Cohen and Ayla Humphrey. She is a teacher and psychologist by training and has worked at the National Autistic Society as Head of Action Research. She founded Play Included in 2018, with support from the Cambridge Social Ventures incubator programme, University of Cambridge to support children's development through play and promote LEGO®Therapy. Initially designed to improve the social skills of people with autism spectrum disorders but no intellectual disabilities, its effectiveness has been demonstrated by studies targeting this specific population. However, no research has yet been carried out in France on its application to a wider population, including various forms of neurodevelopmental disorder. Furthermore, existing studies have not considered the impact on the quality of life of beneficiaries and their families, which this thesis sets out to examine.

How to read ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’

Reading the Mind in the Eyes is a psychometric test first published by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues in 1997 and revised in 2001. It was designed to measure subjects' ‘mentalizing’ ability, or their capacity to attribute cognitive and emotional states to others. Although originally developed and used for autistic adults, this instrument has proven remarkably durable in the succeeding two decades. This is notable for several reasons. The instrument itself is a historical artefact composed of cropped photographs from 1990s-era commercial magazines. Researchers have also noted that it may measure emotional vocabulary better than emotion recognition. In the decades following its publication, the theory underpinning the test, that autistics lack components of the ability to empathize, has been critiqued both by autism researchers and by autistics themselves. Despite these potential shortcomings, researchers in numerous fields have used it to assess a broad range of diagnostically defined groups, including those with substance use disorders, eating disorders and personality and neurodevelopmental disorders. Indeed, it is cited far more frequently now than it was in the decade following its publication. This essay considers how this instrument defines autism as a particular type of disability, and how the capacities purportedly associated with the ability to read minds through eyes are then used to characterize a range of human differences.

Irony and Sarcasm

Irony and Sarcasm

FECTS: A Facial Emotion Cognition and Training System for Chinese Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Traditional training methods such as card teaching, assistive technologies (e.g., augmented reality/virtual reality games and smartphone apps), DVDs, human-computer interactions, and human-robot interactions are widely applied in autistic rehabilitation training in recent years. In this article, we propose a novel framework for human-computer/robot interaction and introduce a preliminary intervention study for improving the emotion recognition of Chinese children with an autism spectrum disorder. The core of the framework is the Facial Emotion Cognition and Training System (FECTS, including six tasks to train children with ASD to match, infer, and imitate the facial expressions of happiness, sadness, fear, and anger) based on Simon Baron-Cohen's E-S (empathizing-systemizing) theory. Our system may be implemented on PCs, smartphones, mobile devices such as PADs, and robots. The training record (e.g., a tracked record of emotion imitation) of the Chinese autistic children interacting with the device implemented using our FECTS will be uploaded and stored in the database of a cloud-based evaluation system. Therapists and parents can access the analysis of the emotion learning progress of these autistic children using the cloud-based evaluation system. Deep-learning algorithms of facial expressions recognition and attention analysis will be deployed in the back end (e.g., devices such as a PC, a robotic system, or a cloud system) implementing our FECTS, which can perform real-time tracking of the imitation quality and attention of the autistic children during the expression imitation phase. In this preliminary clinical study, a total of 10 Chinese autistic children aged 3–8 are recruited, and each of them received a single 20-minute training session every day for four consecutive days. Our preliminary results validated the feasibility of the developed FECTS and the effectiveness of our algorithms based on Chinese children with an autism spectrum disorder. To verify that our FECTS can be further adapted to children from other countries, children with different cultural/sociological/linguistic contexts should be recruited in future studies.

TARB書評: Simon Baron-Cohen, The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention

TARB書評: Simon Baron-Cohen, The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention

Theory of mind of adolescents in the context of inclusive education

Topicality of the study is due to the need for practice in understanding and substantiating the psychological foundations of the formation of such a personality trait of adolescents as tolerance, as well as in identifying other personal characteristics of adolescents as predictors of the formation of tolerance. The purpose of the article is a generalised theoretical presentation of the empirical results of a pilot study of the personality traits of adolescents in the context of inclusive education. Achieving this goal makes it possible to reveal the psychological mechanisms of the adolescent's social behaviour. The study of the problem of the mental model as a predictor of the formation of tolerance in adolescents in the context of inclusive education was carried out within the framework of the methodological principles developed by Simon Baron-Cohen, as well as in the framework of the system-subject approach of Yelena Sergiyenko, in which the traditions of the systemic (Boris Lomov, Alexei Leontiev, Vladimir Shadrikov) and the subject-activity (Sergei Rubinstein, Kseniya Abul'khanova, Andrey Brushlinskiy, Viktor Znakov) approaches in psychology are creatively integrated. The article presents and substantiates the results of an empirical study of the mental model as a predictor of the formation of tolerance in adolescents in the context of inclusive education. In the course of applying the procedure of regression analysis, on the basis of the mental model, the basic personality predictors of the formation of tolerance in adolescents – “self-control in communication”, “self-attitude” and “situational anxiety” were identified. The resulting regression model explains the possibility of influencing the general index of tolerance through the indicated personal characteristics. The mental model makes it possible to conceptualise the inner world of a teenager. The article substantiates new research opportunities for studying the ability of adolescents to understand their own mental world and the mental world of another. The conclusion is made about the high productivity of using the mental model, its research capabilities in the study of individual personality traits, and, in particular, in the formation of adolescent tolerance in the context of inclusive education.

Mechanizm systematyzujący i hipersystematyzujący osób z autystycznego spektrum w teorii wynalazczości „jeżeli-i-to” Simona Barona-Cohena – konteksty edukacyjne

The article is based on the latest theory of human inventiveness by Simon Baron- -Cohen (2021). The author is convinced that people on the autism spectrum have specialized minds that systematize. He calls them “born pattern seekers”. They create the foundations of human civilization, demonstrating a “love of logic” (Baron-Cohen, 2021, p. 15). The precision and tendency to classify demonstrated by such people results from the need to understand the surrounding reality in the process of different preferences for learning. The researcher reformulated the understanding of the autism spectrum in social sciences and humanities, embedding it in the concept of neurodiversity. Simon Baron-Cohen initiated a debate on changing the way of thinking about autism – a transition from the medical-diagnostic understanding of autism as a disorder or disability to understanding it as a specialized uniqueness in the way of interpreting reality, noticeable in people on the autism spectrum.

Our restless minds

Two brain circuits explain the unique human capacity for invention – an insight that may also shed light on the evolution of autism, says researcher Simon Baron-Cohen

Simon Baron‑Cohen, Teoria zła. O empatii i genezie okrucieństwa, przekład Agnieszka Nowak, Wydawnictwo Smak Słowa, Sopot 2014

Recenzja książki Simona Barona – Cohena, Teoria zła. O empatii i genezie okrucieństwa, przekład Agnieszka Nowak, Wydawnictwo Smak Słowa, Sopot 2014.

CChildren diagnosed with "ASD" are first of all … children.

It is estimated that worldwide one in 160 children is affected with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Based on aepidemiological studies conducted over the past 50 years, the prevalence of ASD appears to be increasing globally. We talk about "spectrum" due to the variety of symptoms and the complexity in providing a coherent and uniform clinical definition; autistic disorders include a whole series of conditions and syndromes with behavioural characteristics as a common denominator, although at varying degrees or levels of intensity [Pearson et al., 2018; Ferrazzano et al., 2019]. Patients diagnosed with ASD do not differ from other patients as far as their dental treatments or oral health issues are concerned. However, due to some of their characteristic behaviours or disorders, such as limitation in communication, self-injurious behaviour, eating habits (uncontrolled and restrictive feeding), opposition to dental care, hyposensitivity to dental pain and hypersensitivity to external stimuli, they are at a greater risk of having worse oral health conditions than the general population [Jaber, 2011]. The paediatric dentist should mainly focus on the behavioural approach, working in collaboration with the patient's family in order to recognise the desires, abilities and limits of the child. We have to become the reference for families and caregivers, instructing them on how to provide optimal home dental care. On this subject, Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Center at the University of Cambridge, defined autism as "an example of neurodiversity", stating that "differently wired brains lead to different profiles of strengths and challenges, and should not be judged as better or worse. They're just different. People with autism are asking for acceptance and respect". It should be noted that children, including those diagnosed with ADS, are not healthy without good oral health.

The content of self-image in subjects with distorted personal development (based on autism spectrum disorder cases)

Background. Distorted development as a variety of psychological dysontogenesis (autism spectrum disorder, among others) can combine elements of general underdevelopment, delayed, damaged and accelerated development of single psychic functions, which brings in considerable difficulties in organizing the study of cognitive and personal features in such children and imposes a number of restrictions on the researcher. Thus the specific kind of personal sphere organization in children with the distorted type of psychological dysontogenesis with its multiple manifestations still remains a subject not yet studied in depth. Objective. Characterizing the specific features of self-image content in primary school aged children who have autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and preserved intelligence in comparison with their coevals who develop normally. Hypotheses put forward: 1) Self-consciousness in children with ASD who have preserved intelligence reveals specific features when confronted with the self-consciousness of their peers who develop normally; 2) Qualitative specificity of self-image content in children with ASD is influenced both by the particularity of mental structure and by whether or not the manifestations of internal representations are intact. Design. The study, which is of the comparative-descriptive nature, was focused on the state of self-image components in children with autism spectrum disorder without intellectual disabilities, on the one hand, and their normally developing peers, on the other hand. The experimental group included 14 boys aged 8 to 11 who have ASD without intellectual disabilities. The control group included 14 boys aged 8 to 11. The methods applied were: conversation, observation, “Sally and Anne” false belief test (Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan M. Leslie, and Uta Frith), “Age-gender identification” method developed by N.L. Belopolskaya and modified by T.I. Kuzmina, “Drawing a human” (with subsequent interpretation according to E.V. Svistunova’s table), “Who am I?” method by Manford H. Kuhn and Thomas S. McPartland in T.V. Rumyantseva’s modified version, “Complete the sentence” method by T.I. Kuzmina (modified version of Sachs–Levi’s “Unfinished sentences” method). Results. Statistically relevant difference between the two groups, the experimental and the control one, was found in the state of the following identity components: perspective I, physical I. The relevance of the difference in the communicative I is not certain. Children with autism spectrum disorder show a variety of manifestations of distorted self-concept formation. Those children whose mental structure has not developed correctly have difficulties in the formation of the perspective I, fragmentary or absent conceptions of themselves in future; they are unable to imagine their social and age group role in the remote future, in contrast to the children with ASD who have an intact mental structure. Children with intact manifestations of internal representations show an ambivalent self-relation: their reflexive I embraces both positive and negative esteems connected to the attempts at assessing their estrangement and differences from the others, especially if their parents are reluctant to reveal their diagnosis and give the reasons for their children’s problems. Conclusions. The results obtained within the present study allow to take a broader view of autism as a distorted variant of psychological dysontogenesis. They also show the necessity of further variative studies that could assess the specific character of such children’s personality structure with respect to gender specificity, as well as the necessity to establish the basis for differentiated organization of person-oriented interaction with the children in question within psycho-correctional, pedagogical and educative contexts.

Girls and women with autism.

Girls and women with autism are often undiagnosed, misdiagnosed or receive a diagnosis of autism at later age. This can result in adverse outcomes in their well-being, mental health, education, employment, and independence. The diagnosis of autism spectrum condition/disorder (hereinafter referred to as autism), with its current features linked with descriptions in the major diagnostic classification systems, is based primarily on observations and research on males. The term 'Autism Spectrum Condition' (ASC), used in this paper, has been coined by Simon Baron-Cohen and used in the professional literature for a decade to respect these individuals on the autism spectrum who feel that the term 'disorder'is stigmatizing, whereas ASC presents both the strengths of these people and difficulties they experience. The research shows that autism in females has unique symptomatology and manifests itself differently, more subtly, especially in high-functioning girls and women, i.e., those with fluent speech, average or above-average intelligence quotient. The research also shows diagnostic stereotypes and lack of required sensitivity to identify autistic females. Additionally they do not reflect the unique presentation of autism in females demonstrated by greater compensatory capacity and an ability to develop sophisticated methods of 'camouflaging'and masquerading. Furthermore, autism in females is associated with high comorbidity during adolescence including anxiety disorder, tic disorder, depression, high incidence of suicide, eating disorders, and high rates of other medical problems. Timely diagnosis, however, can reduce the difficulties that females with autism experience over their lifetime, allowing for the assessment of their needs regarding health, education, leisure, social relationships, and employment.

The Truth about Hans Asperger’s Nazi Collusion

Simon Baron-Cohen absorbs the grave revelations in a study on a paediatrician enmeshed in autism’s history. Simon Baron-Cohen absorbs the grave revelations in a study on a paediatrician enmeshed in autism’s history.

Has autism found a place in mainstream TV?

Has autism found a place in mainstream TV?

The truth about Hans Asperger’s Nazi collusion

Simon Baron-Cohen absorbs the grave revelations in a study on a paediatrician enmeshed in autism’s history. Simon Baron-Cohen absorbs the grave revelations in a study on a paediatrician enmeshed in autism’s history.

The Curious Transformation of Boy to Computer

The Curious Transformation of Boy to Computer

Simon Baron-Cohen: cultivating diversity

Simon Baron-Cohen: cultivating diversity

Sympathetic Realism in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction by Rae GREINER (review)

Reviewed by: Sympathetic Realism in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction by Rae GREINER Rebecca N. Mitchell GREINER, Rae. Sympathetic Realism in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. 224pp. $60.00 hardcover. In a recent best-selling work, cognitive neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen described the absence of empathy as the very nature of evil. Such intense scientific focus on Einfühlung, a word which had no English equivalent until the twentieth century, follows on the heels of a concentration of interest in “fellow-feeling”—a more capacious term in earlier use—in the field of literary studies, and especially in the study of the novel. Accounts of British realist fiction have long acknowledged that instilling fellow-feeling in readers was the motive and modus operandi of novels like Middlemarch. Rae Greiner’s Sympathetic Realism in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction adds to the critical discussion by working to “pry apart thinking and feeling” (3) and to expose the mechanisms of the “sympathetic protocols” (40) that drive realist fiction. Those protocols arise not merely from socially-conscious themes or meta-fictional commentary imploring readers to act or think in certain ways, but—Greiner argues—in the very form of the text: the rendering of dialogue, the “case” model, the narratorial perspective and, most importantly, the metonymic structure that defines the realist plot and mode of representation. This focus on form distinguishes Greiner’s studies from other recent works on fellow-feeling in the nineteenth-century novel, including Suzanne Keen’s field-defining study Empathy and the Novel, which considers the responses provoked in readers by fiction; or Rachel Ablow’s and Audrey Jaffe’s analyses of affective extension in plot and theme; or the neuro-imaginative work of Kay Young or Alan Palmer, who explore the process of thinking depicted in and evinced by the novel. Greiner is interested less in how the reader responds to a novel’s effects than in the means through which the novel elicits or thwarts a response and the ways in which it depicts the reach and limitations of its characters’ sympathetic imaginations. Before turning to works by Bentham, Austen, Trollope, Dickens, George Eliot, Conrad, and Henry James, Greiner establishes a foundational paradigm in Adam Smith’s cognitive model of interpersonal apperception. Fellow-feeling depends on fictions, Smith argues in The Theory of Moral Sentiments; one can only ever imagine the feelings of the other, and sympathetic extension is thus “a highly creative process” (8). The relevance of this model to the fiction composed in its wake might seem self-evident, though Greiner is careful not to suggest that the authors she considers consciously enacted Smithian paradigms in their works. Rather, traces of Smith’s construction of the imaginative nature of interpersonal knowledge are mapped, first in the intersection of case studies, “historicizing fiction” (12), and history itself, as manifest in the works of Bentham, Austen, and R. G. Collingwood, whose works are fruitfully juxtaposed in chapter 2. If for Bentham, any meaning in language is dependent on “expressive contexts” and “social-sympathetic processes” (12), Dickens’s plots, as Greiner argues in chapter 3, expose the risks of unsympathetic and anti-social contexts, where “estrangement in language is the alienation most painfully felt” (88, emphasis in the original). Her analysis is perhaps most illuminating here, as Dickens’s aphasiac characters—Greiner focuses on Nicholas Nickleby and Little Dorrit—must depend entirely upon the “sympathetic communication” of those capable of interpreting their unintelligible utterances, acts of translation that demand a preternaturally sensitive imagination. In her fourth chapter, Greiner follows George Eliot’s lead, working to “disentangle sympathy, identification, and knowledge” (125). She attends to the nagging challenges posed by omniscience, [End Page 129] presumed omniscience, and over-sympathizing in works by Eliot (especially The Lifted Veil and Impressions of Theophrastus Such), Conrad (The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’) and James (The Sacred Fount). Throughout the study, Greiner employs Roman Jakobson’s metaphor/metonym structure to underscore the idea that sympathy’s affective extension, and thus realist fiction, functions metonymically. Like Jakobson, she relies on heuristic contrasts to make her argument, and the stakes of those contrasts become evident in the conclusion, where she aligns sympathy, realism...

Identifying Autism Symptoms using Autism Spectrum Quotient (ASQ): A survey amongst Universiti Sains Malaysia Students

The advancement of ICT technology especially in detecting rare diseases has becomingly common in today's technology. One of the issues that arise is how this technology could help human to identify Autism characters? Little research has being made to educate society how to recognize this symptom and most of the past research was concentrated only for autistic child and none of the outcomes are dedicated for the society to understand. This study investigates the levels of autism symptoms amongst target respondents in Universiti Sains Malaysia by using Autism Spectrum Quotient (ASQ). This instruments is a questionnaire published in 2001 by Simon Baron-Cohen and it consists of fifty questions and it aims is to investigate whether adults of average intelligence have symptoms of autism or one of the other autism spectrum conditions. A quantitative survey method through the distribution of questionnaire and online survey form has being applied. The finding shows that significance levels of autism symptoms amongst respondents are rising and become silently increased. The findings from this study will help researcher to analyze and propose suitable method in identifying Autistic behavioral symptoms through engaging multimedia learning environment.

Wit and wickedness: is it all in the brain?

Simon Baron-Cohen has a justified reputation as one of the world’s leading authorities on autistic spectrum disorders. He is not only a prodigiously productive and imaginative researcher but also a brilliant popularizer who has done as much as anyone to communicate the clinical and scientific understanding of autism to the world at large. This is not, however, without its hazards, the most striking of which is the Freudian slip of seeing the world beyond the clinic through clinical eyes. In The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (2003), he argued that people with autistic spectrum disorders, most of whom are male, are like men only more so. His reasons for suggesting this are tenuous to say the least. One of the most striking features of autism is a ‘mind-blindness’ expressed as an inability to see things from another’s point of view, and to tap into, or empathize with their emotions. Many people with autism, however, will have preserved, or even enhanced, abilities to engage with the physical world, particularly in the sphere of logical reasoning. While they feel utterly at sea in social situations, they are at home in the world of facts and logic and material objects. Isn’t that ‘just like a man’, who may be good at maths and not notice that you are on the verge of tears? And how unlike a woman, who will indeed see the expression on your face but not be particularly interested in your pitilessly detailed account of the specification of the latest car that has taken your fancy. Thus, on the basis of the observed characteristics of autistic individuals who lack empathy and yet are often hyper-systemizers, was launched the notion of the fundamental difference between the empathic female (ideal for nursing) and the systemizing male (ideal for …