A deficit in empathy has consistently been cited as a central characteristic of Asperger syndrome (AS), but previous research on adults has predominantly focused on cognitive empathy, effectively ignoring the role of affective empathy. We administered the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a multi-dimensional measure of empathy, and the Strange Stories test to 21 adults with AS and 21 matche...

Using the Swedish Medical Birth Registry (MBR), obstetrical and demographic information was retrieved for 250 children with autism or Asperger syndrome who were born in Malmoe, Sweden, and enrolled at the local Childand Youth Habilitation Center. The reference group consisted of all children born in Malmoe during 1980 – 2005. Obstetric sub-optimality (prematurity, low Apgar scores, growth restr...

Children aged 3-12 years (n = 184) with typical development, deafness, autism, or Asperger syndrome took a series of theory-of-mind (ToM) tasks to confirm and extend previous developmental scaling evidence. A new sarcasm task, in the format of H. M. Wellman and D. Liu's (2004) 5-step ToM Scale, added a statistically reliable 6th step to the scale for all diagnostic groups. A key previous findin...

Feelings of awkwardness at a party are not limited to the teenage scene. Remember the guy who won’t look at you when he talks but mumbles as he gazes at his shoelace or the more unnerving fellow who gets too close and breathes into your face as he talks? Many people suffer from problems interacting with others. At the extreme, these people may be labeled with autism, Asperger disorder, and soci...

This study was designed to determine if ToM abilities of children with autism and Asperger syndrome differentiate into Intrapersonal ToM and Social ToM. A battery of Social and Intrapersonal ToM tasks was administered to 39 children with autism and 34 children with Asperger syndrome. For both groups of children, ToM differentiated and Intrapersonal ToM was stronger than Social ToM. This asymmet...

BACKGROUND joint attention in children with autistic spectrum disorders. AIM to evaluate joint attention ability in subjects with autistic spectrum disorders in different contexts and with different interlocutors. METHOD twenty subjects with ages between four and twelve years, diagnosed with autism or asperger syndrome (DSM-IV-TR, 2002) by a multidisciplinary team, with no associated disord...

People with high functioning autism (HFA) and Asperger syndrome (AS) have deficits in theory of mind (ToM). Traditional ToM tasks are not sensitive enough to measure ToM deficits in adults, so more subtle ToM tests are needed. One adult level test, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test has shown that AS and HFA subjects have measurable deficits in the ability to make ToM inferences. Here we int...

Local information processing in 42 adults with high functioning autism, 41 adults with Asperger syndrome and 41 neurotypical adults was examined. Contrary to our expectations, the disorder groups did not outperform the neurotypical group in the neuropsychological measures of local information processing. In line with our hypotheses, the self-reports did show higher levels of local information p...

Publishing my paper on Asperger's syndrome in 1981, and suggesting that it is part of the autistic spectrum, has had various consequences. These include the growth of interest in the syndrome among the general public as well as professionals. Controversy over definitions of subgroups and prevalence of autistic spectrum disorders has increased. Adult psychiatrists are becoming aware that high fu...

An experiment was devised to test the empathising-systemising (E-S) theory of autism. Three groups of participants took part in the study: males with Asperger Syndrome (AS) (n = 18), males without AS, (n = 44) and females from the general population (n = 45). Each participant completed two tasks: one that involved empathising and another that involved systemising. On the empathising task, femal...