Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brained behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Simon Baron Cohen on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Simon is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry and director of
Speaker 1: the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University. He's the author
Speaker 1: of six hundred scientific articles and multiple books, including The
Speaker 1: Science of Evil, The Essential Difference, and most recently, The
Speaker 1: Pattern Seekers, How Autism Drives Human Evolution The Pattern Seekers,
Speaker 1: How Autism Drives Human Invention. Simon, so great to chat
Speaker 1: with you today. Thank you very much for advising me. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's such a pleasure to talk to you. I feel
Speaker 1: like we go way back to the Cambridge days. I
Speaker 1: remember Giddaly attending year lectures at Cambridge and sitting in
Speaker 1: the very very back bench, you know they had benches,
Speaker 1: and being like Wow, the great Simon Baron COVID. It
Speaker 1: was a fun time. Great. Well, yeah, I remember those
Speaker 1: times too, and it's good to sort of meet you
Speaker 1: again in the present. Here. I am still in Cambridge.
Speaker 1: Where are you? That's a good question. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: I'm in Santa Monica, California right now because I'm I'm
Speaker 1: stranded due to COVID. So it's a whole story. But
Speaker 1: I'm a professor at Columbia in New York City. Great,
Speaker 1: you know during reg war programming. Sure, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed reading this new book years because I've
Speaker 1: been I've been, I've been reading all your books and
Speaker 1: kind of we'll at the evolution of your thinking on
Speaker 1: this topic. In fact, that's that's how I'd like to
Speaker 1: start this conversation, is on what you see as some
Speaker 1: of the biggest core aspects of the evolution of your
Speaker 1: thinking about this topic from when you first started studying
Speaker 1: it to now. Yeah. So I would say that the
Speaker 1: big change that's happened over the thirty thirty five years
Speaker 1: that I've been involved in autism research for me, that
Speaker 1: we it wasn't just me, but you know, the field
Speaker 1: was focusing on kind of the deficits is that autistic
Speaker 1: people have, which is maybe no surprise because that's part
Speaker 1: of how the diagnosis is made. So autistic people struggle
Speaker 1: with social skills, with communication, with adjusting to unexpected change,
Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of the research then was
Speaker 1: just focused on the social difficulties. And maybe what's changed
Speaker 1: is that we were realizing that autism is more than
Speaker 1: just a disability. Autism involves thinking differently. And there's a
Speaker 1: kind of a new phrase that I'm sure we'll talk about, neurodiversity.
Speaker 1: These are individuals who process information differently, they think differently,
Speaker 1: and some of those differences aren't about disability, they're about
Speaker 1: strengths and even talents. So kind of, you know, the
Speaker 1: second half of my career, as it were, has focused
Speaker 1: more on the strengths, on the positive aspects of autism,
Speaker 1: not just focusing on what they find difficult, but what
Speaker 1: they might do even better than the rest of us.
Speaker 1: So talents is a fascinating area. Let's double click for
Speaker 1: a second on even within our changing understanding of their
Speaker 1: social deficits. Let's double click on that as well before
Speaker 1: we get to talent and creativity, because you know, as
Speaker 1: I'm more and more I dig into that literature, I
Speaker 1: see that a lot of autistic individuals are have a
Speaker 1: lot greater motivation to connect and to make friends and
Speaker 1: meet then maybe they were given credit for in the past,
Speaker 1: and maybe even they have you know, you know the
Speaker 1: difference between cognitive and affective empathy, you know, and how
Speaker 1: maybe in certain aspects of empathy they actually aren't compaired.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering how you're thinking in terms of
Speaker 1: the social realm has changed as well over the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely so. I think it's a myth or a stereotype
Speaker 1: that autistic people don't want to socialize. I mean, that
Speaker 1: may be true of some, and we should be careful
Speaker 1: not to generalize, but if anyone, that's true of anyone,
Speaker 1: really right, Yeah, but I think I've certainly met autistic
Speaker 1: people who want friends but just have difficulty making friends,
Speaker 1: or if they may friends, maybe have difficulty keeping friends.
Speaker 1: You know, So the motivation might well be there. But
Speaker 1: you raised this question about empathy, and you know, one
Speaker 1: kind of old view was that autistic people struggle with
Speaker 1: with some aspect of empathy. But what I think, what
Speaker 1: we now know is they don't struggle with all of empathy.
Speaker 1: So empathy is this kind of umbrella concept, and within
Speaker 1: empathy you mentioned, we can distinguish at least two components,
Speaker 1: cognitive and affective. The cognitive part is being able to
Speaker 1: imagine someone else's thoughts and feelings, so it's the kind
Speaker 1: of recognition part, and it does involve a bit of
Speaker 1: an other leap of imagination because we can't directly see
Speaker 1: what someone is thinking or feeling, so there's an imaginative
Speaker 1: component to it. But the affective part is having an
Speaker 1: emotional response to someone else's thoughts and feelings, so it's
Speaker 1: more the response element. And when it comes to autistic people,
Speaker 1: they seem to have more difficulty with the first kind
Speaker 1: of empathy, the cognitive empathy, maybe because they like facts
Speaker 1: and precision, and when you're trying to imagine another person's
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings, we don't have a lot of facts
Speaker 1: to go on. That's why we have to be willing
Speaker 1: to make that leap of imagination. You know, I wonder
Speaker 1: if Scott is feeling this, or I wonder if he
Speaker 1: might be thinking this, But it's speculative, it's not factual.
Speaker 1: But they don't seem to struggle with the affective part
Speaker 1: of empathy. So if you tell an autistic person, you know,
Speaker 1: Scott is feeling really sad because he just had a
Speaker 1: recent loss, you know, an autistic person, just like anyone else,
Speaker 1: will feel bad about that. Someone to sort of step
Speaker 1: in and try to help or to give comfort. So
Speaker 1: they have the appropriate emotions once they know the information.
Speaker 1: But it's getting the information about what is someone thinking
Speaker 1: or feeling that they struggle with. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in the difference between artism and psychopathy,
Speaker 1: for instance, and you're in this book Evil and really
Speaker 1: diving into that. Could you please talk a lot about
Speaker 1: some of the differences, because I don't think serial killers
Speaker 1: are really great at affective empathy. Is that right? You
Speaker 1: don't think what serial killers are amazing effective empathy? No, exactly. So,
Speaker 1: I mean serial killers would be like an extreme case.
Speaker 1: But even if we just thought about antisocial personality disorder,
Speaker 1: they don't all end up being serial killers. But of
Speaker 1: course most psychopaths are on Wall Street, not not serial killers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully not for too long. But you know, some people
Speaker 1: have suggested that people with anti social personality disorder, which
Speaker 1: would include you know, psychopaths as we call them, they
Speaker 1: might be the mirror image of autistic people. So they
Speaker 1: may have very good cognitive empathy. That's how they can
Speaker 1: sort of so they can figure out what you might think,
Speaker 1: what you might want, what you might feel, and that
Speaker 1: may be how they can manipulate people and deceive people,
Speaker 1: including their victims. But they probably don't have great affective empathy,
Speaker 1: so they don't really care about their victims feelings and
Speaker 1: that's how they're able to commit the horrible crimes that
Speaker 1: they do. So that was the kind of topic of
Speaker 1: my previous book in the UK. The title the title
Speaker 1: of the book was Zero Degrees of Empathy, looking at
Speaker 1: how do people lose their empathy in different ways? I
Speaker 1: think in the US they called Science of abel Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the American publishers thought that would be kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: better suited to American readers, But anyway, that was the
Speaker 1: kind of it was. It was all about how do
Speaker 1: we explain cruelty and how do we explain kindness too,
Speaker 1: in terms of these two different fractions of empathy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a really good book. And you know, this
Speaker 1: idea of this discrepancy between affect and cognive empathy among
Speaker 1: people on the autism spectrum it must be very confusing
Speaker 1: to them quite often to be able to feel something
Speaker 1: but not be able to cognitively attach and understand as
Speaker 1: maybe as readily and easily as someone else a neurotypical person.
Speaker 1: What it is their feeling like being able to label
Speaker 1: aspects of emotional intelligence that I'm allowles to navigate the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that when when autistic people, again we're generalizing,
Speaker 1: but sure, but when autistic people feel concerned for another person,
Speaker 1: I think they know what they know what they're feeling,
Speaker 1: and when they want to rush out and help or
Speaker 1: stand up against an injustice, you know, I think they
Speaker 1: know what, they know what they're feeling. I think it's more,
Speaker 1: you know, the cognitive aspect of empathy might be very bewildering.
Speaker 1: So if you're looking at someone's face and you can't
Speaker 1: be sure how to interpret it, so difficulties with interpreting
Speaker 1: facial expression or vocal intonation. You know, is he being sarcastic,
Speaker 1: is he being angry? Is he being bored? You know,
Speaker 1: all the different potential mental states that could be expressed
Speaker 1: if you've got trouble reading those things that other people
Speaker 1: can read very intuitively. You know, I think that's probably confusing.
Speaker 1: And then the other way that we use cognitive empathy,
Speaker 1: or that it is used, is to predict people's behavior,
Speaker 1: to make sense of behavior, and to predict what people
Speaker 1: might do next. You know, so if we if we
Speaker 1: ascribe to another person this person may want to cheat me,
Speaker 1: we might sort of think twice about trusting them or
Speaker 1: you know, but with autistic people, often they might just
Speaker 1: take their take another person's words at face value, and
Speaker 1: it leaves them very vulnerable to exploitation in different ways,
Speaker 1: thinking about the other person's motives for example. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: there also tend to people and that i'spect them tend
Speaker 1: to say what's on their mind. You know, they don't
Speaker 1: like bullshit And can that be difficult in this in
Speaker 1: this world of wolkeness? You know, have you ever thought
Speaker 1: about that, like can it be difficult because people are
Speaker 1: just they just say, well, they want to understand things,
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe some of the things they want
Speaker 1: to understand aren't politically correct. Yeah. So again, the kind
Speaker 1: of neurotypical world as we now call it involves a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, you're expected to be able to
Speaker 1: read between the lines and maybe not always say what's
Speaker 1: on your mind or kind of you know, find a
Speaker 1: nice way to say it which doesn't hurt the other
Speaker 1: person's feelings whatever. But you know, all of this takes
Speaker 1: a lot of complex processing of how can I say
Speaker 1: something keeping in mind what the other person might feel
Speaker 1: or think, whereas a lot of a lot of autistic
Speaker 1: people i've might prefer just much more direct, sometimes blunt communication,
Speaker 1: but at least you know, and then and then they
Speaker 1: want to take people's words as a direct readout of
Speaker 1: what people are thinking, and they want and they want
Speaker 1: other people to do the same with them. And you know,
Speaker 1: how how much easier would life be if we could
Speaker 1: just take people's you know, words at face value, much
Speaker 1: more kind of literal communication. But you know, that's not
Speaker 1: the way the work, the real world works. People say
Speaker 1: that they're going to be your friend, but actually they
Speaker 1: may not mean it, you know, and it's it does
Speaker 1: leave to people very confused and and as I say, vulnerable, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the more when I read your work and stuff,
Speaker 1: I start thinking, well, I have a lot of autistic
Speaker 1: like traits. It's possible to have autistic like traits right
Speaker 1: and not be on the autism spectrum. Is that is
Speaker 1: that possibly in terms of personality characters, because when you
Speaker 1: start describing some of the stuff, it's like like you're
Speaker 1: just I feel like you're describbing me, but in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. Yeah, So I guess another thing that's
Speaker 1: changed over the decades of research is that we now
Speaker 1: recognize autistic traits run right through the population, so we
Speaker 1: all we all have some autistic traits. Yeah. We actually
Speaker 1: developed we developed a metric, an instrument for how you know,
Speaker 1: to measure how many autistic traits a person has. It's
Speaker 1: just a questionnaire. It's called the AQ, the Autism spectrum quotient,
Speaker 1: and it's a sort of bell curve in the population.
Speaker 1: So most of us have just an average number, and
Speaker 1: then people who who need a diagnosis of autism just
Speaker 1: tend to have a lot more, so they're kind of
Speaker 1: shifted over to the right of the bell curve. And
Speaker 1: even then, you could have a lot of autistic traits
Speaker 1: and still not need a diagnosis, because it's always always
Speaker 1: about the fit between you and your your situation. So
Speaker 1: even if you have a lot of autistic traits, if
Speaker 1: they're not interfering with your life, if they're not causing
Speaker 1: any causing you to suffer, then you may not need
Speaker 1: a diagnosis, you know. Yeah, that's a that's a really
Speaker 1: good point. So maybe we should dive into your new
Speaker 1: book because I wanted Wait, we did a good job there,
Speaker 1: I think laying the foundation and you know for this
Speaker 1: your latest work, your latest masterpiece, The Pattern Seekers. So
Speaker 1: the main thesis of this new book is that the
Speaker 1: genes for autism perhaps drove the evolution of human invention,
Speaker 1: even going back seventy eighty thousand years ago, because you know,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, but my listeners may not know this,
Speaker 1: but there's this big bang of cultural explosion that we see,
Speaker 1: you know, in humanity that has been not fully explained yet.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Miller has I bought this sexual selection right, you know,
Speaker 1: and others have. People have their different theories about what
Speaker 1: it was. I'd love to hear your thinking on and
Speaker 1: how perhaps the genes for systematizing and autism might have
Speaker 1: played a role there. Sure, So, you know, in my book,
Speaker 1: I kind of look at invention and arguing that there's
Speaker 1: a link between. I think it's uniquely human the capacity
Speaker 1: for invention and autism, you know, and on the face
Speaker 1: of it doesn't seem like there should be a link.
Speaker 1: You know, autism, as we've been describing as traditionally viewed
Speaker 1: as a disability. Invention is almost like the crowning achievement
Speaker 1: of our species. If you look around the planet, you know,
Speaker 1: what characterizes Homo sapiens seems to be are kind of
Speaker 1: unstoppable capacity for invention. You know, here we are talking
Speaker 1: through Skype, you know, an invention possibly invented by somebody
Speaker 1: who had a lot of autistic traits, a man in Denmark.
Speaker 1: But anyway, you know, our whole environment, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I've got my cup of juice here, and you know
Speaker 1: I have my pen here, and all the things around
Speaker 1: us are just kind of inventions. When you start looking
Speaker 1: at it that well, that's actually orange juice, Like what
Speaker 1: is that? If we were a little bit closer, maybe
Speaker 1: in the same room, I would share my juice with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Even during the Colvin aide So you know,
Speaker 1: my book, you know, first of all, addresses well what
Speaker 1: is invention? What do we mean by invention? And I,
Speaker 1: you know, I take as my starting point the archaeological record,
Speaker 1: you know, when do we see the first signs of invention?
Speaker 1: And some people argue that because our ancestors before Homo sapiens,
Speaker 1: there was Homo habilis, homoerectus, even the Neanderthals. They were
Speaker 1: using stone tools. So do those things count as invention?
Speaker 1: You know, they had they were using stone rocks like
Speaker 1: a hammer to crack a nut, or they were making
Speaker 1: their own axes out of stone to cut or to know,
Speaker 1: you know, to slice or to scrape in different ways.
Speaker 1: You know, so simple tools with limited number of functions.
Speaker 1: But do those counters as inventions? Well, I sort of
Speaker 1: see those is we could argue about whether those are inventions,
Speaker 1: but there was. They seem to be quite limited. And
Speaker 1: then around one hundred thousand years ago to seventy thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, Homo sapiens is on the scene and we
Speaker 1: see this kind of explosion of new inventions. And just
Speaker 1: to give you a couple of examples, seventy thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: we see the bow and arrow, which I argue is
Speaker 1: a complex tool, not a simple one. And we see
Speaker 1: other amazing things like the first jewelry, which was necklace
Speaker 1: of bead shells, and the first musical instrument, which was
Speaker 1: a flute made out of a bone, a hollow bone.
Speaker 1: And in each of these cases, you can sort of
Speaker 1: see a particular logic that must have been in the
Speaker 1: minds of the person who invented it. And I argue
Speaker 1: that there was a new circuit in the brain, which
Speaker 1: I call the systemizing mechanism, which allowed us to it
Speaker 1: allowed us to look for these new patterns in the world.
Speaker 1: I call them if and then patterns. So if we
Speaker 1: take the bow and arrow, or the inventor of the
Speaker 1: bow and arrow, he or she would have been thinking,
Speaker 1: if I attach an arrow to a stretchy fiber and
Speaker 1: I release the tension in the fiber, then the arrow
Speaker 1: will fly. So it's if and then, you know. Or
Speaker 1: if we take this kind of first musical instrument, the
Speaker 1: inventor would have been thinking, if I blow down this
Speaker 1: hollow bone and I cover one hole, then I get
Speaker 1: a particular note. But if I blow down the bone
Speaker 1: and uncover the whole, then I get a different note.
Speaker 1: And what we're basically seeing is human beings experimenting, doing
Speaker 1: little experiments using this if and then logic. And my
Speaker 1: thesis is that this this derived from a new mechanism
Speaker 1: in the brain. It's like a revolution in the human brain.
Speaker 1: That other species are our ancestors. And other species living
Speaker 1: today are bones or dolphins. No other species has got
Speaker 1: this kind of capacity for looking for these logical patterns
Speaker 1: if and then patterns. And that's what's enabled, you know, unstoppable.
Speaker 1: I call it generative invention. We don't just we don't
Speaker 1: just invent at once. We're generating non stop. You know,
Speaker 1: we've even invented a vaccine against COVID. I'm still doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: connect the dats between that and autism. Sure, so autistic
Speaker 1: people when you give them little tests of this if
Speaker 1: and then reasoning, they score above average on these tests.
Speaker 1: When you give them questionnaires asking how interested are you
Speaker 1: in systems of one kind or another? Because the minimal
Speaker 1: definition of a system is these if and then patterns.
Speaker 1: Engineers call it input operation output, but they map onto
Speaker 1: the same constructs. You know, you take the input, you
Speaker 1: perform an operation on it, and then you look look
Speaker 1: at the output. You see what you get and when
Speaker 1: you when you use those questionnaires, We've got one called
Speaker 1: this systemizing quotient, which just asks you how interested are
Speaker 1: you in how things are made? In what you know?
Speaker 1: How interested are you in taking things apart to see
Speaker 1: how what the components are in a system How interested
Speaker 1: are you in in numbers or in musical patterns or
Speaker 1: in the weather patterns of the weather. You know, autistic
Speaker 1: people score much higher on those questionnaires, and so do
Speaker 1: people who work in STEM in science, technology, engineering, and math.
Speaker 1: So there are these little clues that autistic people may
Speaker 1: think in very similar ways that their systemizing mechanism may
Speaker 1: be kind of tuned to a higher level so that
Speaker 1: they're seeing these patterns much more than other people. They're
Speaker 1: looking for them, they're playing with the patterns, and they're
Speaker 1: doing this at an above average level. Very interesting hypothesis.
Speaker 1: How do you do you think your hypothesis is better
Speaker 1: than the other hypothesis that are out there. For instance,
Speaker 1: I'll lay out a couple others. You know, some of
Speaker 1: argument language is the seed of consciousness that allowed for
Speaker 1: the but language is reduced in autism. They're you know,
Speaker 1: verbal communication. Another hypothesis is, you know, Previc has this
Speaker 1: theory that the dopaminergic mind is what is responsible. You
Speaker 1: know that it's really that's the dopamine that's pumping that
Speaker 1: exploration drive, but you actually see reduced levels of that
Speaker 1: in people with autism. You know, in terms of that
Speaker 1: form of creativity. It's a schizop more schizotipy kind of
Speaker 1: form of creativity. So how do you reconcile that with
Speaker 1: all those other competing theories. Sure we could take them
Speaker 1: one by one, but if we just take language, for example,
Speaker 1: because obviously one huge difference between modern humans Homosapiums and
Speaker 1: our ancestors and equally other living non human species is language.
Speaker 1: A language undoubtedly gave us all kinds of advantages over
Speaker 1: other species. But I don't necessarily see systematizing as incompatible
Speaker 1: with language. So those if and then patterns that I
Speaker 1: think I needed every time you invent something, I think
Speaker 1: also are seen in syntax in language. So when we're
Speaker 1: trying to derive the rules of syntax, it's no different
Speaker 1: really to deriving the rules of music, or the rules
Speaker 1: of mathematics, or the rules of you know, how how
Speaker 1: your computer works. It takes that if and then logic.
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention that in this theory about what
Speaker 1: changed in the human brain seventy thousand years ago to
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand years ago. I think there were two
Speaker 1: big changes. I've mentioned the systemaizing mechanism, but the other
Speaker 1: one we touched on earlier, which I call the empathy circuit,
Speaker 1: because when we look at these new inventions that suddenly
Speaker 1: appeared in the archaeological record, we can see them as
Speaker 1: evidence of systematizing that suddenly we modern humans could reason
Speaker 1: in using this particular logic. But I think we can
Speaker 1: also see them as evidence of the empathy circuit. So
Speaker 1: take the musical instrument. You know, the inventor wasn't just
Speaker 1: thinking what happens when I blow down the hollow bone
Speaker 1: and cover one hole? How does the sound change? Not
Speaker 1: just thinking about the physics of the object, but they
Speaker 1: were probably also thinking what's going to be the impact
Speaker 1: on a listener? You know, how might somebody else us
Speaker 1: experience the sounds that I'm making? You know, might they
Speaker 1: take the music that I'm creating as communicating? So that
Speaker 1: might be you know, pointing not just to the inventor
Speaker 1: having the capacity to systemize or to invent, but also
Speaker 1: to think about the experience of other people equally with
Speaker 1: the first jewelry, you know, so the first jewelry, which
Speaker 1: goes back seventy thousand years, somebody had collected some shells
Speaker 1: and drilled a little hole into each shell, so you
Speaker 1: can see them systemaizing. If I take this shell and
Speaker 1: I drill a hole into each shell, and I insert
Speaker 1: a thread through the holes, then I can create a necklace.
Speaker 1: You know, so you can see the if and then logic.
Speaker 1: But equally, you know, why were they making this jewelry?
Speaker 1: Was it because as they were thinking about how they
Speaker 1: would be perceived if they wore it, that somebody else
Speaker 1: might perceive them as more attractive or a different social status.
Speaker 1: Or were they making the jewelry as a gift for
Speaker 1: somebody else because they imagine somebody else might want it
Speaker 1: or appreciate it. So the jewelry itself can be taken
Speaker 1: both as evidence of the systemaizing mechanism and the empathy
Speaker 1: circuit being in place. So yeah, I was just going
Speaker 1: to say that. You know, when we go back to
Speaker 1: language as a kind of you know, a rival theory
Speaker 1: for why did you know, why did humans come to
Speaker 1: dominate the planet? I think you can see language itself
Speaker 1: as a kind of it draws on both systematizing, that's
Speaker 1: the syntax element, and it draws on the empathy circuit.
Speaker 1: Because when we communicate, we have to be thinking about
Speaker 1: what does our listener need to know? You know, what
Speaker 1: is our listener, you know? Is my listener understanding my
Speaker 1: my communications? You know? Do I need to clarify my message?
Speaker 1: So empathy kind of is involved in language too, So
Speaker 1: I don't see language as a sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: as a rival explanation. I think it kind of includes
Speaker 1: at least two of these big ingredients. And are you
Speaker 1: claiming that people the artistic people, by the way, is
Speaker 1: it people with autism or artistic people? Have you said
Speaker 1: have you settled that there isn't a right or wrong
Speaker 1: way to talk about autism? But from talking to the
Speaker 1: autism community, my reading is that the majority prefer to
Speaker 1: prefer what's called identity first language. So I'm an autistic
Speaker 1: person rather than I have autism. So is the is
Speaker 1: the is there's the idea that artistic people don't have
Speaker 1: necessarily that high functioning empathy circuit that you're describing there,
Speaker 1: but they have the systematizing one. But it obviously there
Speaker 1: was more than just autism that that drove the evolution
Speaker 1: of of humanity. And I think so. So I think
Speaker 1: listening what you're saying, I think we can come up
Speaker 1: with a meta theory that that the even allows us
Speaker 1: to incorporate schizotypal thinking in that form of openness to
Speaker 1: experience and dopamine and the default mode brain network. So
Speaker 1: I'm really fascinated with the default mode brain network, and
Speaker 1: I've called it, I've called it the imagination network and
Speaker 1: been popular talks and things, and and I'm very interested
Speaker 1: in the idea that people autistic people tend to not
Speaker 1: have as default activation of their default mode network. So
Speaker 1: a lot of that kind of so your imagination is
Speaker 1: is is not as on call for them, so to speak,
Speaker 1: but it seems like bold. So I think that maps
Speaker 1: onto what you're saying is both the kind of social
Speaker 1: imaginations implant as well as systematizing. Yeah, absolutely so, I
Speaker 1: think the default mode network. My understanding of the brain
Speaker 1: regions involved is that they do overlap quite a lot
Speaker 1: with what's called theory of mind or cognitive empathy. Right,
Speaker 1: So when you're when you're lying in the MRI scanner
Speaker 1: and your mind is just wondering, you know, for for
Speaker 1: a typical person, often you're thinking about other people. When
Speaker 1: you're you're thinking about other people's thoughts about you, or
Speaker 1: you're thinking about your own thoughts. Either way, that might
Speaker 1: lead to an activation of these social regions of the brain.
Speaker 1: When we reflect on our own thoughts or on someone
Speaker 1: else's thoughts, it's likely to involve the same circuitry, this
Speaker 1: ability to imagine thoughts and feelings. Yeah, and there's plenty
Speaker 1: of evidence that in autistic people there's underactivation of those regions,
Speaker 1: either when they're doing an explicit social task or even
Speaker 1: when they're just sort of in resting state as it's called,
Speaker 1: you know, just doing nothing, lying in the scanner. But
Speaker 1: you know, what we did was a big population study
Speaker 1: we call it the Brain Types Study, where we got
Speaker 1: over over half a million people to take part, so
Speaker 1: this is described in the book. We had I think
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand people from the general population and then
Speaker 1: thirty six thousand non autistic people, sorry, autistic people, So
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand non autistic and thirty six thousand autistic.
Speaker 1: So it's a very my big study. And they took
Speaker 1: this systemizing question, the empathy questioned, and also this third
Speaker 1: measure a Q, which measures autistic traits, and we saw
Speaker 1: some very interesting patterns that again kind of made us
Speaker 1: see links between people who are talented at systemaizing or
Speaker 1: talented at invention and autistic traits. Wow, This is absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1: I think I'm really weird personally because I think I
Speaker 1: score two standard deviations above the meat on both autism
Speaker 1: and schizotipy at the same time. And I'm wondering how
Speaker 1: that's humanly possible. But have you have your menyone who
Speaker 1: scores high in both of the questionnaires. It's a pleasure
Speaker 1: to you know, you may be the first. That's great. No,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be more. There's got to be more, because
Speaker 1: I have a very good social imagination as well as
Speaker 1: I really like when I when I meet some an
Speaker 1: autisy person, I really feel comfortable with them. You know,
Speaker 1: I really feel like coming home in a way, you
Speaker 1: know that all the bullshit is you know, cut out
Speaker 1: of I can just we can just talk. But I
Speaker 1: also feel very at home with artsy you know, flighty
Speaker 1: like dreamers as well. Yeah, you know, yeah, So this
Speaker 1: is really cool being able to clarify some of this
Speaker 1: stuff because there's almost two separate literatures in now I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put this way. Within the science of creativity literature,
Speaker 1: there tends to be much more of a focus on
Speaker 1: the dopaminergic But talking about inventions, you know, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I was, I was coming up, you know with
Speaker 1: you know, my pen is an invention. You've got a
Speaker 1: Lexa there, But there they all they were all made
Speaker 1: possible possible by that same systematizing circuit in the brain.
Speaker 1: You know, this if and then logic the person who
Speaker 1: programmed Alexa or you know, whether it's a a physical,
Speaker 1: concrete system or a more digital one. So I think
Speaker 1: it's great that we had a little a little sort
Speaker 1: of auditory aim there. Good if we could tie it
Speaker 1: to the lesson plan of the day. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you look into the science of
Speaker 1: creativity literature, but that literature, you know, even like the
Speaker 1: creative Identity questionnaire, like so much for the creative questionnaires,
Speaker 1: divergent thinking tests, it's all so much focused. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it's on autistic like creativity that you're talking about
Speaker 1: that kind of invention kind of thinking. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's focused more on openness to experience and and and
Speaker 1: more of like default mode network kind of creativity. So
Speaker 1: could it be that maybe this autistic form of the
Speaker 1: great strengths for creativity have gone neglected even in this
Speaker 1: in the creativity literature within psychology, that I would say
Speaker 1: it has to a large extent. So let me check
Speaker 1: I understand your question. Have they these theories have been
Speaker 1: neglected in the creativity literature, right? You know? So I
Speaker 1: mean I think this, you know, I think this focus
Speaker 1: on if and then patterns could be very relative to
Speaker 1: understanding creativity because the point is that you can, you know,
Speaker 1: you can take any system analyze it in terms of
Speaker 1: if and then. But then you can start to play
Speaker 1: with any one of these variables. You can change the
Speaker 1: input that's the if, or you can change the operation
Speaker 1: you perform on the input that's the end to get
Speaker 1: a different a different then a different output. And so
Speaker 1: just as as as a way of explaining how do
Speaker 1: we generate novelty, how do we generate new patterns? I
Speaker 1: think this could add to that literature. Equally, coming back
Speaker 1: to autistic people, I think the concept of divergent thinking,
Speaker 1: what thinking out of the box. You know, it could
Speaker 1: be that autistic people have a certain advantage being sort
Speaker 1: of less sociable unless preoccupied by what do other people think.
Speaker 1: They're not following the crowds, they're not following conventions, they're
Speaker 1: not following what's fashionable, but they're kind of thinking things
Speaker 1: through from first principles, which may mean that they can
Speaker 1: come up with with a fresh way of looking at something.
Speaker 1: So I think you've done a great service there in
Speaker 1: bringing that point to the fore, because you know, I
Speaker 1: may have been ensconsed in the creativity literature for twenty
Speaker 1: years or so, and just so much of it is
Speaker 1: a focus. You know, they do talk about connecting dots,
Speaker 1: but it's not so much focused with like pattern recognition
Speaker 1: ability as much as like openness to experience and artsy
Speaker 1: kind of you know, like for instance, reduced to lead inhibition,
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of having a low filter having
Speaker 1: like you know. So I like that you're bringing this
Speaker 1: in to the discussion of invention and creativity. Not only
Speaker 1: bringing in, but you're saying it me have been the
Speaker 1: mean driving force of human invention. Yeah. So that big
Speaker 1: study I mentioned earlier, to six hundred thousand people, we
Speaker 1: were basically able to categorize the whole population into five
Speaker 1: types of brain I can ask you that. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: some people score much higher and systematizing than they do
Speaker 1: on empathy, so we call that type S, and other
Speaker 1: people have the reverse profile. They score much higher on
Speaker 1: empathy and they doing so we call that type E,
Speaker 1: and each of those brain types is about thirty percent
Speaker 1: of the population. And then there's a middle group who
Speaker 1: are kind of equally good at systemaizing and seeing these
Speaker 1: patterns as they are reading other people's thoughts and feelings,
Speaker 1: so we call them type B for balanced, and that's
Speaker 1: another thirty percent. And then we have people who are
Speaker 1: at the extremes. So an extreme of type S is
Speaker 1: someone who kind of sees patterns all the time. They're
Speaker 1: always looking for these patterns and playing with them, experimenting
Speaker 1: with them, but their empathy may just be average or
Speaker 1: below average, and that's where we see a lot of
Speaker 1: autistic people, but also that's where we see people in
Speaker 1: the world of STEM. So there's this kind of overlap
Speaker 1: between people who are inventors and autistic people. And the
Speaker 1: big surprise for us was when we collected DNA working
Speaker 1: with the company twenty three and meters, we found that
Speaker 1: the common genetic variants that are associated with scoring high
Speaker 1: ends systematizing overlap to some extent with the common genetic
Speaker 1: variants that are associated with autism. So even at the
Speaker 1: molecular level, not just at the cognitive the molecular level,
Speaker 1: we were seeing an overlap between autistic people and people
Speaker 1: who invent What are the genes? What are the genes
Speaker 1: called for? You do you know? So these are genes
Speaker 1: that are they're called they're called single nucleotide polymorphisms. So
Speaker 1: these are genes that might be anywhere in the genome,
Speaker 1: but which come in different versions that so we might
Speaker 1: be carrying slightly different versions of the gene or the alleles,
Speaker 1: and each of these polymorphisms or common genetic variants has
Speaker 1: a tiny effect on behavior, which is why you need
Speaker 1: kind of large population studies to see how they're working
Speaker 1: in combination. So there isn't a quick answer to say,
Speaker 1: look on chromosome seven or look on right because there
Speaker 1: are hundreds or even thousands of these things. But it's about,
Speaker 1: you know, do you carry a particular a combination. And
Speaker 1: what we found was that the particular combination that we
Speaker 1: call them hyper systemizers, carry overlaps. It's not a complete overlap,
Speaker 1: it was about twenty six percent overlap with the combination
Speaker 1: that autistic people carry. So, you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: we find any association with genetics and pattern recognition, I
Speaker 1: think is quite important because it's telling us that natural
Speaker 1: selection may have shaped people to either be better or
Speaker 1: worse at pattern recognition. There may have been some advantages
Speaker 1: to a person who could see these patterns more quickly
Speaker 1: and build new systems. And then the link with autism
Speaker 1: just suggests that maybe we need to rethink autism, that
Speaker 1: we should just see as a disability that they're car
Speaker 1: you know, the genes that make them autistic are also
Speaker 1: the genes that you know, have allowed human progress beautiful.
Speaker 1: So the natural next question is why don't monkey skateboard? Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for that question. I mean, this is this
Speaker 1: is the title of a chapter in my book, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of curious when you look around at
Speaker 1: other species, we just don't see them experimenting, you know,
Speaker 1: with humans. You know, skateboarding is a great example of experimenting.
Speaker 1: If you watch kids out in the street, it might
Speaker 1: irritate you that they're kind of skating up and down
Speaker 1: a ramp and doing it for hours and hours and
Speaker 1: they're trying to perfect a particular move. And it turns
Speaker 1: out there are at least one hundred and one different
Speaker 1: things you can do with a skateboard, you know, there's
Speaker 1: you know, we don't just do one thing with it.
Speaker 1: We're always experimenting to see what we can do with it,
Speaker 1: you know, and kids who go out to do this,
Speaker 1: they're not doing it because their parents told them, you've
Speaker 1: got to study harder to you know, to improve your skateboarding.
Speaker 1: They're just up to experiment. And we just don't see
Speaker 1: this in monkeys, or in apes, or in you know,
Speaker 1: any other species really. So although that's a kind of
Speaker 1: like a ludicrous example, it is interesting that, you know,
Speaker 1: we could take a much simpler example, like in the playground.
Speaker 1: You know, we've humans have built a seesaw where we're
Speaker 1: playing with what happens to the seesaw when different people
Speaker 1: are at each end and there are different weights. We're
Speaker 1: experimenting with with you know, with with physics effectively, and
Speaker 1: we just don't see this in other species. So to me,
Speaker 1: you know, what what this is shouting out is that
Speaker 1: you know, other species don't experiment. We experiment with with medicines,
Speaker 1: you know, even thinking about you know, natural herbs as medicines,
Speaker 1: you know, and our ancestors were doing this long before
Speaker 1: modern science, experimenting with what, you know, what kinds of
Speaker 1: foods or things that we could eat or drink might
Speaker 1: heal certain ailments. But all of this is this if
Speaker 1: and then logic. You know that today we take an
Speaker 1: aspirin as a painkiller to to get rid of a headache.
Speaker 1: You know, we know that that's derived from the bark
Speaker 1: of the willow tree, and that it's come from traditional medicine.
Speaker 1: That was you know, the result of playing with these
Speaker 1: these if and then patterns. You know, if I have
Speaker 1: a headache and I eat the bark of the willow tree,
Speaker 1: then my headache goes away. It's the same logic. We
Speaker 1: don't see monkeys experimenting with with medicine either. So why, well,
Speaker 1: I'm still not clear on. I mean, I don't expect
Speaker 1: you to have all the answers to all life's and
Speaker 1: mysteries figured out. But what what? What cause? What allow
Speaker 1: enabled this ability? I mean, couldn't one argue it was
Speaker 1: the emergence of consciousness to a certain degree, or that
Speaker 1: even language enabled us to have this kind of scientific thinking.
Speaker 1: So again, you know, we talked a little earlier about
Speaker 1: you know that language would have been of huge benefit.
Speaker 1: If we could talk to ourselves or talk to other people,
Speaker 1: we could pass on some of the lessons we'd learned,
Speaker 1: or we could do some of this hypothetical thinking through language.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sort of struck that there are humans
Speaker 1: who don't have language as a result of a stroke.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are humans, you know, autistic people who
Speaker 1: have very minimal language, but they still can do some
Speaker 1: of this pattern recognition and playing with patterns to invent,
Speaker 1: including with music. You know. So I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: languages is a necessary sort of precursor for invention. But
Speaker 1: I guess the other way you could look at this
Speaker 1: question is we know that monkeys and apes can can
Speaker 1: see patterns. And you know, we were talking earlier about
Speaker 1: your time in Cambridge when you were studying with the
Speaker 1: great Nick Macintosh, you know, and he was, you know,
Speaker 1: his field of specialty was about kind of association learning,
Speaker 1: associative learning, particularly in non human animals. You know. So
Speaker 1: monkeys can do a hell of a lot, so can birds,
Speaker 1: and you know, many different species they can. They can
Speaker 1: use associative learning to see the relationship between A and B.
Speaker 1: So using the hammer A leads to the outcome B,
Speaker 1: which is to get the juicy inside of the nut.
Speaker 1: You know. But that's that's not necessarily going to give
Speaker 1: you invention. Just being able to just be able to
Speaker 1: learn the association between two two items, if you like,
Speaker 1: or even doing that in sequence, you know, because monkeys
Speaker 1: and birds can often do associative learning across many difference taps,
Speaker 1: you know, so paired, you know, they're they're they're pairing
Speaker 1: lots of associations in a sequence. But it doesn't that
Speaker 1: doesn't add up to this if and then logic, which
Speaker 1: I think is the thing that gives us generative invention.
Speaker 1: But where did that come from? How do we get
Speaker 1: that add on? You know? And I suppose that I
Speaker 1: suppose you know, there are two answers to this. One
Speaker 1: might have been that we're looking at an abrupt change
Speaker 1: in the human brain that was almost like a quantum leap.
Speaker 1: The other possibility was that, you know, we're looking at
Speaker 1: incremental changes. And I don't think there's a kind of
Speaker 1: there's any evidence to settle that debate yet. I don't
Speaker 1: think I just have settled it. Yeah not today, But
Speaker 1: I mean, I just love I know that I can
Speaker 1: nerd out with you at a deeper level than maybe
Speaker 1: you know when you're on like the BBC or something,
Speaker 1: you know, like so like let's let's get into it,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's some really interesting no offense to
Speaker 1: the BBC, but you know what I'm saying. You know,
Speaker 1: we're there, we're two psychologists talking shops. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's two things I'd like to recommend. Gregory Feist's book,
Speaker 1: The Psychology of Science and the Origins of the Scientific Mind,
Speaker 1: a really great book. He tries to his own attempt
Speaker 1: to trace the evolution of modern day human you know,
Speaker 1: creativity through the emergence of scientific thinking. But also, Daniel
Speaker 1: Bohr wrote a really good book called The Ravenous Brain.
Speaker 1: Have you come across Daniel Boor? He's at Cambridge, so
Speaker 1: I think he's still at Cambridge. I certainly met him,
Speaker 1: we worked together. We even published a paper together cool
Speaker 1: that was on synesthesia actually, which is something we haven't
Speaker 1: yet talked to. Yeah, I haven't read his book, so
Speaker 1: thank you for recommending it. Yeah, because I think it's
Speaker 1: relevant in terms of like talking about the prefront of
Speaker 1: cortex's ability to chunk information and consciousness and how that
Speaker 1: allows you to see patterns. So that seems relevantle But
Speaker 1: you know, the work I did with Nick McIntosh now
Speaker 1: and realizing I just realized now is very relevant to
Speaker 1: your work, and I really wish to darn he was
Speaker 1: alive and we could have like an email thread gene
Speaker 1: on this, you know, but maybe maybe we could dedicate
Speaker 1: this podcast to his memory, because I think I think
Speaker 1: he was an inspiration to both of us, deep deep inspiration.
Speaker 1: My grace meant. Yeah, he had a fantastic sort of
Speaker 1: again logical way of thinking problems, you know, through, but
Speaker 1: a real clarity of thought too. Plus plus he was
Speaker 1: just a real real nice guy, you know. So he
Speaker 1: had that kind of combination of of logic and kind
Speaker 1: of the kind of warmth of humanity. So you know,
Speaker 1: he died way too soon, but a very distinguished psychologist. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you for talking about that. I think that that's
Speaker 1: a good service. But you know, the research he was
Speaker 1: pushing the in direction in is to look at the
Speaker 1: distinction between implicit learning that we share with other animals
Speaker 1: that you were describing and and human intelligence. And that
Speaker 1: that was the topic of my dissertation that it was
Speaker 1: one of the advisors on. So we found it it
Speaker 1: was dissociable. So there is something there in I'm not saying,
Speaker 1: so there might be something to you what you're saying
Speaker 1: that's not that's not what I meant, But I'm saying
Speaker 1: it might not be crazy after roll Simon beren Cohen.
Speaker 1: But I'll take that. My point is I'm not not
Speaker 1: saying that, I'm saying I'm excited that that that there's
Speaker 1: a there's potential linkage I hadn't really thought of before.
Speaker 1: But the correlation between the ability to solve like Ravens
Speaker 1: advanced progressive matrices items which we know people in autism
Speaker 1: actually are better on average, and finding those patterns consciously
Speaker 1: there was almost a zero correlation with individual differences in
Speaker 1: unconscious pattern learning. Right, So can you tell me the
Speaker 1: paper your dissertation sounds great, and can you tell me
Speaker 1: how did you measure the implicit learning or implicit associations. Well,
Speaker 1: we used a form of SRT learning, which is serial
Speaker 1: reaction time, and so we had people do keypresses and
Speaker 1: the eighty percent of the time would fall a certain
Speaker 1: pattern and twenty five or maybe it was eighty five, fifteen,
Speaker 1: fifteen percent it followed a different pattern, and unknown to
Speaker 1: people because during the debriefing they said, I had no
Speaker 1: idea there was a pattern. People's response times were getting
Speaker 1: much faster when there was a unconscious pattern. But they
Speaker 1: had no conscious awareness of it. And we found there
Speaker 1: were individual differences in that, you know, like and it
Speaker 1: correlated what open is to experience and created in some
Speaker 1: forms of creativity, but it was wholly uncorrelated with Ravens. Right,
Speaker 1: and your listener's our listeners may be interesting to know that.
Speaker 1: But correct me if I'm wrong that this kind of
Speaker 1: implicit association learning or recognition of persons is something that's
Speaker 1: widespread in the animal kingdom. Yeah, and put the learning
Speaker 1: is widespread. You had some mostly their their their main
Speaker 1: form of learning anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yet you know,
Speaker 1: other animals don't seem to invent you know, that seems
Speaker 1: to be it's not the only thing that characterizes modern humans.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a big one. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: I agree, I think it's I think it's a terrific point.
Speaker 1: I really do. You You made another really good point,
Speaker 1: which I'm glad you made in your book. You said,
Speaker 1: when we acknowledge the debt, we owe autistic people and
Speaker 1: make our society more inclusive and autism friendly. This will
Speaker 1: benefit society, lead to innovation, and enable autistic people to
Speaker 1: lead more fulfilling and sex and successful lives. I'd love to.
Speaker 1: I'd love you to elaborate a little bit on some
Speaker 1: ways we can make the workplace and even education more
Speaker 1: autistic friendly. But before I before do you get into that,
Speaker 1: there's something that fascinates me, and that's that you're you're
Speaker 1: actually a little bit controversial in certain circles of the
Speaker 1: neurodiversity movement. It always bogs my mind trying to wrap
Speaker 1: my head around it. Why do you get some pushback
Speaker 1: when you make like you'll make even some things that
Speaker 1: sound to me just like just like wonderful, like autism friendly, inclusive,
Speaker 1: but you'll get actually pushback. You know. I guess you
Speaker 1: can't please everyone in the world. It's something I've learned
Speaker 1: as I forget older. But what is some of this
Speaker 1: potential Why are you potentially controversial? So we talked earlier
Speaker 1: about empathy, and I think some autistic people have reacted
Speaker 1: negatively to the idea that they have any difficulties in empathy.
Speaker 1: And yeah, a lot of my work, but also the
Speaker 1: work of others, has documented, you know, difficulties with cognitive
Speaker 1: empathy or theory of mind. So there is a bit
Speaker 1: of pushback about that. When we did that big study
Speaker 1: with thirty six thousand autistic people. You know, they did
Speaker 1: score lower on the EQ the empathy questioned. They've scored
Speaker 1: higher on the systemizing question, but that empathy piece is
Speaker 1: still there. And you know for some autistic people that
Speaker 1: that might that might feel stigmatizing, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I apologize for that. It's not the intent. The intention
Speaker 1: is not to stigmatize. You know, we're just measuring and
Speaker 1: we're documenting what we find. But you know, that might
Speaker 1: just be one example. But you know, back to your
Speaker 1: kind of bigger point, which is, you know, if if
Speaker 1: this theory has any merit, that autistic people right through
Speaker 1: the last seventy to one hundred thousand years have been
Speaker 1: the individuals who have been more than you know, been
Speaker 1: above average in systemaizing, in playing with these if and
Speaker 1: then patterns to come up with new inventions. So if
Speaker 1: we kind of owe them this huge debt, you know,
Speaker 1: when we look at what's around us today and then
Speaker 1: look at their situation today, you know, I personally find
Speaker 1: it really heartbreaking. So we published this study back in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen looking at suicide rates or suicidality in autistic adults,
Speaker 1: and what we found was that two thirds of autistic
Speaker 1: adults had felt suicidal. One third had attempted suicide. You know,
Speaker 1: this is kind of way above the rates you'd see
Speaker 1: in the general population. And if you kind of look
Speaker 1: at their situation, the majority of autistic adults are unemployed.
Speaker 1: So despite these talents that we've been talking about, they're
Speaker 1: not finding jobs. They're not having that sense of being
Speaker 1: valued by the sety we need. The unemployment for anybody
Speaker 1: is bad for your mental health because it makes you
Speaker 1: feel that you don't have a purpose, that you're excluded.
Speaker 1: It makes you more isolated, you don't feel you belong
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe no surprise that the majority of
Speaker 1: autistic adults have depression and anxiety. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: sort of see that on the one hand, we've got
Speaker 1: this kind of amazing sort of realization that autistic people
Speaker 1: have been contributing enormously to human progress. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: at least with modern society, we seem to have left
Speaker 1: them out to kind of languish with high levels of suffering.
Speaker 1: So my you know, the book is also a kind
Speaker 1: of call to action that it's time for these things
Speaker 1: to change. We need to redesign the way we hire
Speaker 1: people and redesign the workplace, redesign the educational settings, you know,
Speaker 1: to make them more autism friendly, because it's otherwise it's
Speaker 1: a form of discrimination towards towards a group with disabilities. Oh,
Speaker 1: I agree, And you've even proposed maybe two tracks to education,
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? So if we think about school,
Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of autistic people drop out
Speaker 1: of school, and you know, leave school with no formal qualifications,
Speaker 1: even though they've got good intelligence, because they find school
Speaker 1: sort of it's a painful place to be. You know
Speaker 1: that the mainstream classroom is very social with twenty five
Speaker 1: other kids or thirty kids. There's a lot of whispering
Speaker 1: and chatting, and you know, for an autistic person, that
Speaker 1: can be overwhelming and confusing and stressful. And then you know,
Speaker 1: mainstream education sort of expects you to switch subjects every
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. I don't know how it is in the States,
Speaker 1: but over here, you know, you have a lesson and
Speaker 1: then the bell rings and then you move to another lesson.
Speaker 1: You know, and you know, for an artistic person who
Speaker 1: likes to just do one thing at a time and
Speaker 1: to go into something in great depth in a systematic way,
Speaker 1: really trying to understand the patterns in any subject. The
Speaker 1: idea of having to kind of interrupt their learning after
Speaker 1: thirty minutes and switch to something totally unrelated again is
Speaker 1: just it's counter to how they learn. So one suggestion
Speaker 1: is that we should be rethinking even you know, early education.
Speaker 1: We should be looking at kids as they come into
Speaker 1: school at age three or four and using that classification
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. If a kid has more of
Speaker 1: a systematizing brain type S, maybe they're going to benefit
Speaker 1: from learning in small groups and in a more hands
Speaker 1: on way, doing experiments and observation, you know. And if
Speaker 1: they've got more of a type E brain, you know,
Speaker 1: where they can navigate the social world much more easily,
Speaker 1: maybe that's fine for them to be in the mainstream,
Speaker 1: noisy classroom where they're learning from a teacher, you know.
Speaker 1: So these are just kind of suggestions really that we
Speaker 1: shouldn't assume that the educational system is kind of well
Speaker 1: suited to everybody that one size song, you know, neurodiversity
Speaker 1: is the norm. That's to say, there are many types
Speaker 1: of brains. We shouldn't assume that, you know, that the
Speaker 1: way we've designed schools so far is optimal for all kids.
Speaker 1: Love it any further reflections on how we can nurture
Speaker 1: the inventors of the future. Well, so, now if we
Speaker 1: think about, you know, the world of employment. You know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of companies are beginning to realiz
Speaker 1: is that that having a team that's made up of,
Speaker 1: you know, of people who think differently to each other,
Speaker 1: means that we don't just get the result where everyone
Speaker 1: is agreeing with each other. We need disagreement. We need
Speaker 1: we need new fresh ideas. And you know, having an
Speaker 1: autistic person in your team may just mean that you know,
Speaker 1: they're thinking, I'm sorry to use that cliche, out of
Speaker 1: the box. They're thinking differently and that is the source
Speaker 1: of innovation, but also doing it now that we can
Speaker 1: see they're doing it using this very systematic kind of logic.
Speaker 1: If and then thinking, so, you know, that could be
Speaker 1: you know, if we can hire autistic people, it's good
Speaker 1: for the individual gets them, it's inclusion, it's potentially good
Speaker 1: for the company in terms of productivity. You know, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't just see this as kind of a chat charitable
Speaker 1: thing to do for autistic people. I think it could
Speaker 1: be good on both sides. And I think it's good
Speaker 1: for society because you know, we're we are meant to
Speaker 1: be a civilized society where we don't just leave people
Speaker 1: out to waste away. That's a great, really great point.
Speaker 1: To what extent do you think some of the sex
Speaker 1: differences that you find in certain STEM fields is attributable
Speaker 1: to the sex difference in autism and systematizing interest as
Speaker 1: opposed to to straight up sexism and discrimination. I know
Speaker 1: that's a awarded question. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean this
Speaker 1: is another one of those areas which has been controversial,
Speaker 1: so to say the least. But but there's got I mean,
Speaker 1: there's this, There is a huge sex difference in systematizing, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is. So so I published another book back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three called The Essential Difference, which was
Speaker 1: looking at empathy and systemaizing but in terms of gender,
Speaker 1: you know, suggesting that these are two dimensions, two psychological
Speaker 1: processes where we do see sex differences on average, and
Speaker 1: there's you know, depending on how you want to measure it,
Speaker 1: whether it's questionnaires or performance tests, you do see that
Speaker 1: on tests of empathy, on average, females tend to score higher,
Speaker 1: and on tests of systematizing, on average, males seem to
Speaker 1: quit higher. You know, the differences aren't huge, but they're
Speaker 1: statistically significant. We saw that, particularly in that big study
Speaker 1: with the six hundred thousand you know that, and you know,
Speaker 1: so it raises this question, is that also why autism
Speaker 1: is more common in males than in females? And I
Speaker 1: think probably historically we've overlooked a lot of autistic females,
Speaker 1: you know, So that's kind of a criticism of of
Speaker 1: clinicians and of clinics and the methods that we use
Speaker 1: that we haven't been sort of recognizing autism in females.
Speaker 1: So there may have been under diagnosis there. But even
Speaker 1: if you account for the underdiagnosis, because a lot of
Speaker 1: that seems to be shifting a lot more women and
Speaker 1: girls are coming forward for a diagnosis, there still seems
Speaker 1: to be a bias towards males in terms of autism.
Speaker 1: So more, you know, more males get diagnosed, and it
Speaker 1: may be that we need to look at, you know,
Speaker 1: partly biological factors for that. And again we're in the
Speaker 1: territory of controversy that that's you know, the psychotic podcast
Speaker 1: is not antithetical to the area of contract control. How
Speaker 1: did you phrase it? Controversy I would say controversy, but
Speaker 1: I feel like either way you said, it is much
Speaker 1: more elegant. Well, I mean at the I mean I'm
Speaker 1: interest in the truth the tales. At the tales, it's
Speaker 1: really truly striking, isn't it. Just the systematizing proportion of
Speaker 1: males in the extreme right tale of the distribution. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we were talking about the extreme of type S
Speaker 1: and the extreme of Type E, so the hyper systemizers
Speaker 1: or the hyper empathizers, And yeah, the sex difference, the
Speaker 1: sex ratio is quite striking. It's probably at least two
Speaker 1: to one, so twice as many males than females at
Speaker 1: the extremes of systematizing and vice versa, twice as many
Speaker 1: females at the extremes of empathizing. So that's not the
Speaker 1: whole story, but it just seems to me it's got
Speaker 1: to be part of the story if we're having an
Speaker 1: honest discussion. Yeah, exactly, And I think, you know again,
Speaker 1: we need to sort of be measure and balanced in
Speaker 1: how we think about these sex differences, because some of
Speaker 1: it is going to come down to culture, the way
Speaker 1: we raise our kids and the way boys and girls
Speaker 1: are exposed to different kinds of influences, but some of
Speaker 1: it may reflect pre natal biology. And I know that
Speaker 1: to some people that's a kind of a red rag
Speaker 1: to a bull, you know, the idea that any sex
Speaker 1: differences might have any any biological component, whether we're talking
Speaker 1: about genetics or hormones. But a kind of more balanced
Speaker 1: view would recognize that both may be, you know, interacting.
Speaker 1: Culture and biology may be interacting to produce these outcomes. Sure,
Speaker 1: and you know, just recognizing that isn't that also the
Speaker 1: core of the whole nerdiversity movement. I mean, the nerd
Speaker 1: diversity movement is not saying it's not the neural cultural
Speaker 1: movement or the culturally that anyway whatever, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be clever, But the point is, it's neuro diversity, right,
Speaker 1: It's a biological component that we want to appreciate. There's
Speaker 1: something in neat to a human that makes them who
Speaker 1: they are, and we want to acknowledge and honor that. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: The other thing that's important to kind of mention, just
Speaker 1: before I know we're getting close to the hour, is
Speaker 1: about sexism. You know, you did, you did raise this question,
Speaker 1: and I think what the what the science tells us
Speaker 1: is that you you can't infer anything about a person
Speaker 1: in terms of their brain based on their gender, because
Speaker 1: the science is only ever sort of done on groups.
Speaker 1: So you can, you can compare females and males on
Speaker 1: average and see these differences that we've talked about. But
Speaker 1: you know, a person's gender doesn't tell you anything about
Speaker 1: whether they might be great at pattern recognition or great
Speaker 1: empathy because an individual may be typical or atypical for
Speaker 1: their sex. So to kind of so to pre judge
Speaker 1: somebody in an interview based on their gender, are they
Speaker 1: suitable for this job in STEM, for example, would be
Speaker 1: sexist and would be discriminating. But that's not what That's
Speaker 1: not what we as scientists are doing. I hope none
Speaker 1: of them, none of the science, none of the science
Speaker 1: justifies sexism. That's that's for sure. They're they're separate domains.
Speaker 1: My last, my last question today is really quite frankly,
Speaker 1: the elephant in the room. Are you related to soft American?
Speaker 1: I am so. He's my cousin, my first cousin, So
Speaker 1: obviously we're working in quite different fields, quite different fields.
Speaker 1: I appreciate his work. So that's just to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, settle that when we are related, but his
Speaker 1: work provides a fasting insight into human eater. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you do you do? You do? You do? You
Speaker 1: find him funny? I find his work funny. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: find his work interesting and sometimes quite psychological. So sometimes
Speaker 1: what he's doing by using deception is bringing out people's prejudices.
Speaker 1: And I sort of see that what he's doing through
Speaker 1: comedy is a form of social psychology, when so just
Speaker 1: go out into the wild and look at how people
Speaker 1: behave you know, sometimes you can sort of set up
Speaker 1: situations so that people reveal their prejudices, for example, and
Speaker 1: I think some of Sasha's work has done that very effectively. Indeed,
Speaker 1: you're still in touch with him, sure, Yeah, I wonder
Speaker 1: if you ever like send him any big peer reviewed
Speaker 1: papers and he's like, oh, this is very relevant too.
Speaker 1: How I can trick someone? So, as I say, our
Speaker 1: work is very different, but we're a very close family.
Speaker 1: Sounds great. Well, Hey, I just want to thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on the Psychology Podcast today and
Speaker 1: for the really truly important work you're doing and raising
Speaker 1: awareness about autism and it's linkages to creativity. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Well, it's been a fun conversation. Really nice
Speaker 1: to see you again after all this time, and thank
Speaker 1: you for inviting me on. Thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in on the discussion at the Psychology podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com. Thanks for
Speaker 1: being such a great supporter of the show, and tune
Speaker 1: in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.