questions for simon baron cohen

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tomorrow morning i am conducting a 1 hour phone interview with simon baron cohen. the interview will be cross published later on wrong planet.

if you have questions for him, please post them here today, i'm doing the interview at 7am ET tomorrow.

note: from the experiences i've had with him, i like him, even though i don't completely agree with all his theories. yes, i know all about the problems with ToM and empathy which we will definitely discuss, along with mirror neurons.

a autism researcher i spoke with at columbia university is very looking forward to seeing this interview.

anyways, if you want me to ask him your questions, please phrase them nicely.

Can we include questions that might have been already answered? If yes, then what exactly is systemization, and does it help people solve certain problems? If it does, what is the pattern which it follows?

(in case it's already well-known, I'd highly appreciate a link with information on that)

sure, ask whatever you want, and i'll pick the most interesting ones.

hi
could you ask him a question about the adolescent experience for an aspergers student.
how bad can it get and what is the general outcome as i am having a really difficult time with my sixteen year old son.

Thanks.

I have heard him discuss before about some of the overlapping characteristics between AS and BPD. This is also something I've come across elsewhere (Tony Attwood has suggested that many adult women get misdiagnosed as BPD, and another book I read from the library said that many AS women would meet the diagnostic criteria for BPD also). I would like to know how he would determine whether an adult woman presenting for diagnosis had AS, BPD or both (especially in the presence of comorbid depression/anxiety and past trauma).

ask him how the fudge his (sexist and cis-sexist) extreme male brain theory explains autistic transwomen. how does it explain this group of people who reject identifying with the masculine? don't let him give a vague answer or avoid it like a politician. i want to see what that neurosexist worm has to say.

Also how does the extreme male brain theory explain the so-called "emotional immaturity"/"lack of emotional control" of many Aspies, both male and female? Emotionality is seen as a stereotypically female trait.

keep the questions coming guys.. you've got about 20 hours more..

i know people have had a lot of questions for simon, so this is the chance to get them answered. but please be respectful, he is a nice, well intentioned guy who wants to help us as much as possible -- and is striving for the truth, just like we are.

Correlation between latent inhibition and systemization?
Why do some people have the ability to have temporarily increased empatization, and others don't? I have a friend who claims to be noticeably less socially appropriate when he's alone, but he "stretches" his empatization when with other people and he goes significantly beyond the level of an average woman! So practically, he's not (and never considered himself) an aspie. Can this skill be trained? Is this skill determined by something we can associate with things that are already know (like, if it has a correlation with executive functions)? I don't seem to have this skill at all.

I would like to know if Simon is aware of the prevalence (either anecdotally, from personal experience or studies) of adults initially considered to not have clinically significant impairment whose situation later changes (eg: loss of relatively Aspie-friendly job, partner/spouse leaving, birth of children) to one where their same personality/neurology does cause clinically significant impairment, and if the apparently situational nature of the diagnostic process for a genetic neurological condition bothers him as a scientist.

In light of the work of Henry and Kamila Markram do you think that the diagnostic criteria for ASD should include sensory issues instead of solely social issues?

thanks for your questions. we discussed a number of the questions from this thread. alex will post the interview when it is completed.

Great, thanks for doing this guywithAS

Will he soon be researching a possible lack of Theory of Mind in NT's toward Autistics,
or
will he continue to highlight empathy defecits due to varying neurologies in spectrumites as somehow-characteristic of them,
based only on their non-majoritive representation of the whole?

Has this been posted yet? Did I miss it?