Does Autism Occur More Often in Families of Physicists, Engineers, and Mathematicians?

Abstract

The study reported here tests a prediction that autism hould occur more often in families of individuals whose occupation requires advanced folk physics but with no requirement of good folk psychology. Physics, engineering, and mathematics are paradigm examples of such occupations. Students in Cambridge University, studying one of these three subjects, were screened anonymously for cases of autism in their families. Relative to a control group of students studying literature, autism was reported to occur significantly more often in families of students in the fields of physics, engineering, and mathematics. Such results are consistent with the prediction. This study necessarily involved anonymous self-report methods, so the reliability and validity of diagnoses are unknown. Future replications should attempt a non-anonymous study so as to establish if this association is robust.