Evolutionary Psychology
The "extreme male brain theory" of autism views autism as an extreme version of male-female differences regarding "systemizing" and empathizing abilities. Evolutionary psychological explanations for these sex differences include that moderate systemizing would be helpful for male dominated activities such as hunting while empathizing would be similarly helpful in female dominated activities such as caring for children. However, extreme systemizing in combination with low empathizing would lead to autism. One explanation for the increased prevalence of autism may be increased assortative mating between high systemizers.
The "imprinted brain theory" is a somewhat similar but not identical theory that considers autism and psychosis to be contrasting disorders on a number of different variables. This is argued to caused by an unbalanced genomic imprinting favoring paternal genes in the case of autism and maternal genes in the case of psychosis.
Read more about this topic: Causes Of Autism
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