Simon Baron-Cohen FBA (born 15 August 1958) is Professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He is the Director of the University's Autism Research Centre, and a Fellow of Trinity College. In 1985 he formulated the mindblindness theory of autism, the evidence for which was collated in his 1995 book. In 1997, he formulated the fetal sex steroid theory of autism, the key test of which was published in 2015. He has also made major contributions to the fields of typical cognitive sex differences, autism prevalence and screening, autism genetics, autism neuroimaging, autism and technical ability, and synaesthesia.
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Personal life and education
Baron-Cohen completed a BA in Human Sciences at New College, Oxford, and an MPhil in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. He completed a PhD in Psychology at University College London; his doctoral research was in collaboration with his supervisor Uta Frith.
He married Bridget Lindley, a family rights lawyer, in 1987. She died in 2016.
Baron-Cohen has three children, the eldest of whom is screenwriter and director Sam Baron. He has an older brother Dan Baron Cohen and three younger siblings, brother Ash Baron-Cohen and sisters Suzie and Liz. Their cousin is the actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Baron-Cohen's surname includes a hyphen--which is not the case with other members of his family--because of a typographical error in his first professional article; he never had the error corrected.
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Autism research
While he was a member of the Cognitive Development Unit (CDU) in London, in 1985 Baron-Cohen was lead author of the first study, published with Alan M. Leslie and Uta Frith, which proposed a correlation between children with autism and delays in the development of a theory of mind, known as ToM. A theory of mind is the ability to imagine other people's emotions and thoughts, and it is a skill that according to Baron-Cohen's research is typically delayed developmentally in children with autism.
Baron-Cohen and his colleagues discovered in 1987 the first evidence that experiences in synaesthesia remain consistent over time; they also found synaesthesia to be measurable via neuroimaging techniques. His team has investigated whether synaesthesia is connected to autism.
In 1997, Baron-Cohen developed the empathising-systemising theory; his theory is that a cognitive profile with a systemising drive that is stronger than empathising is associated with maths, science and technology skills, and exists in families with autism spectrum disorders. He suspects that if individuals with a "systemising" focus are selecting each other as mates, they are more likely to have children with autism. He postulates that more individuals with autistic traits are marrying each other and having children. He said that "In essence, some geeks may be carriers of genes for autism: in their own life, they do not demonstrate any signs of severe autism, but when they pair up and have kids, their children may get a double dose of autism genes and traits. In this way, assortative mating between technical-minded people might spread autism genes." Time magazine said that his views on systemising traits had "earned him the ire of some parents of autistic children, who complain that he underestimates their families' suffering". Time said that while research from Washington University in St. Louis did not support the assortive mating theory, a survey finding that autism was twice as high in Eindhoven (the Silicon Valley of the Netherlands) had "breathed new life" into Baron-Cohen's theory. The assortative mating theory has recently received new support.
Baron-Cohen's work in systemising-empathising led him to investigate whether higher levels of fetal testosterone explain the increased prevalence of autism spectrum disorders among males; his theory is known as the "extreme male brain" theory of autism. A review of his book The Essential Difference published in Nature in 2003 summarises his proposal as: "the male brain is programmed to systemize and the female brain to empathize ... Asperger's syndrome represents the extreme male brain". Critics say that because his work has focused on higher-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders, it requires independent replication with broader samples. His prediction that prenatal testosterone would be elevated in autism has been confirmed.
In 2001 he developed the Autism Spectrum Quotient, a set of fifty questions that can be used to help determine whether or not an adult exhibits symptoms of autism. The AQ has subsequently been used in hundreds of studies including one study of half a million people, showing robust sex differences and higher scores in those who work in STEM.
Baron-Cohen developed the Mindreading software for special education, which was nominated for an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) interactive award in 2002. His lab developed The Transporters, an animation series designed to teach children with autism to recognise and understand emotions. The series was also nominated for a BAFTA award.
Criticism
Organizations
Baron-Cohen is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS), the British Academy, and the Association for Psychological Science. He is a BPS Chartered Psychologist.
He serves as Vice-President of the National Autistic Society (UK), and was the 2012 Chairman of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Guideline Development Group for adults with autism. He has served as Vice-President of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR). He is co-editor in chief of the journal Molecular Autism. He is President-Elect of INSAR.
He is the Chair of the Psychology Section of the British Academy.
Recognition
Baron-Cohen was awarded the 1990 Spearman Medal from the BPS, the McAndless Award from the American Psychological Association, the 1993 May Davidson Award for Clinical Psychology from the BPS, and the 2006 presidents' Award from the BPS. He was awarded the Kanner-Asperger Medal in 2013 by the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft Autismus-Spektrum as a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to autism research.
Media appearances
In 2005, Baron-Cohen appeared in the Science Channel documentary Brainman about Daniel Tammet.
In 2010, Norwegian documentarian Harald Eia published the TV series Hjernevask ("Brainwash") in which Baron-Cohen appeared during two episodes about gender differences in new-born children.
In 2016, he appeared in all 3 episodes of the BBC Two documentary Employable Me, showing the talents in people with autism and how these could be a benefit to employers.
Selected publications
- Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind. MIT Press/Bradford Books. 1995. ISBN 978-0-262-02384-9.
- The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain. Penguin/Basic Books. 2003. ISBN 978-0-7139-9671-5.
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome. Facts. Oxford University Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-850490-0.
- Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty. Penguin/Allen Lane. 2011. ISBN 978-0-7139-9791-0. (published in the US as The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Human Cruelty, ISBN 978-0-465-02353-0)
Other books
- Baron-Cohen S, Tager-Flusberg H, Lombardo MV, eds. (2013). Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives From Social Cognitive Neuroscience (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-852446-5.
- Hadwin J, Howlin P, Baron-Cohen S (2008). Teaching Children with Autism to Mindread: A Practical Guide for Teachers and Parents. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-97623-3.
- Baron-Cohen S, Lutchmaya S, Knickmeyer R (2005). Prenatal Testosterone in Mind: Amniotic Fluid Studies. MIT Press/Bradford Books. ISBN 978-0-262-26774-8.
- Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S (2004). An Exact Mind: An Artist with Asperger Syndrome. Jessica Kingsley. ISBN 978-1-84310-032-4.
- Baron-Cohen S; Tager-Flusberg H; Cohen DJ, eds. (2000). Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-852445-8.
- Baron-Cohen S, Harrison J, eds. (1997). Synaesthesia: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Blackwells. ISBN 978-0-631-19763-8.
- Baron-Cohen S, ed. (1997). The Maladapted Mind: Classic Readings in Evolutionary Psychopathology. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press/Taylor Francis Group. ISBN 0-86377-460-1.
Selected journal articles
- Baron-Cohen S, Leslie AM, Frith U (October 1985). "Does the autistic child have a "theory of mind"?". Cognition. 21 (1): 37-46. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(85)90022-8. PMID 2934210.
- Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S, Skinner R, Martin J, Clubley E (February 2001). "The autism-spectrum quotient (AQ): evidence from Asperger syndrome/high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians". J Autism Dev Disord. 31 (1): 5-17. doi:10.1023/A:1005653411471. PMID 11439754.
- Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S, Hill J, Raste Y, Plumb I (February 2001). "The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" Test revised version: a study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism". J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 42 (2): 241-51. doi:10.1111/1469-7610.00715. PMID 11280420.
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