Study On The Island Ability Of Autistic Children Based On Hiper-systemizing Theory

Autism spectrum disorder,is a kind of developmental disorder that occurs in infants and young children period,main shows social interaction and communication disorders,interest in narrow and repetitive,stereotyped behavior,such as psychological function defect.However,children with autism is backward in general ability such as language,social,imitate,is often associated with inexplicable island and extraordinary detail processing ability,such as the very strong visual space cognitive ability and mechanical memory ability,and talent in music,math,art,etc.This imbalance performance in general is hard to get complete explanation under the existing theoretical framework.In 2002,"Extreme Male Brain Theory of Autism"was proposed by Professor Baron-Cohen at the University of Cambridge.In his theory,autism is thought to be an extreme form of the typical male cognitive style.The female mentality,characterized by empathy,is usually deficient in autism,while male mentality,characterized by systemizing,is greatly developed.This theory was established on the basis of the empathizing-systemizing theory,and then developed into the hyper-systemizing theory.The hyper-systemizing theory suggest that people with autism have island ability have one thing in common,is that these individuals are recognition stimulate repeat mode experts,and these islands genius area are also highly systematic field.There are 3 studies in this paper.Study 1 investigated children with autism in a few special education schools through self-made questionnaire about the island ability,empathy quotient and systemizing quotient.Then 10 children with autism capable of island ability were selected in study 2,matched the age and IQ between experimental group and control group.All participants accomplished picture stories sorting task,to explore the potential relationship between island ability and systemizing.In study 3,researcher inspected calendar ability of two calendar savants by case study,probe into the relationship between their date calculation ability and the systemizing.Results indicated that:(1)29%of children with autism have one or more islands ability;including 13 boys and 2girls.The ratio of male to female is 6.5:1.The occurrence time of islands ability is mostly(83.3%)before 5 years.(2)The empathy quotient and systemizing quotient scores of experimental group were significantly higher than the control group.Although there is no significant difference in autism traits index,the scores in the sub-fields has different performance:experiment group was significantly lower than the control group in social barriers and communication obstacles scores;and significantly higher in the scores of transformation and attention to details;and had no significant difference on scores of imagination disorder between two groups.Correlation analysis results show that there is no significant relationship between the island ability and empathy quotient of experimental group,while highly significant related to systemizing quotient.There is no significant between island ability and autism trait index,but significant related to attention to details.(3)The photo story sort test scores of experimental group were significantly higher than control group.There is no significant relationship between the score of empathy quotient and autism trait index and island ability,but highly relationship between systemizing and island ability scores.(4)The calendar savants did use one or more of the date rules,it shows that they may the experts of date system.And their ability is closely related to the systemizing level.All studies have verified the close relationship between systemizing of children with autism and island ability from different aspects.