Neurodiversity

Predictions (regarding aspects of autism)

Writing these daily entries, I discover something new almost as often as I record something I’ve earlier discovered. A year ago this is what I collected connected to the hypotheses or predictions of this work.

1. Relative testosterone levels in males and females inform matrifocal vs. patrifocal societal structure. High T females choose low T males for their cooperative abilities, creating more egalitarian, matrifocal cultures. High T males choose low T females for their ability to be the complement to male authority, forming patrifocal cultures.

2. Autistic males, from families of left-handers, will have lower testosterone than the norm, and autistic females will have higher testosterone. In any study of autism, those with familial male maturation delay tendencies, families of left-handers, need to be evaluated separately from those possibly traumatized by an environmental effect.

3. Larger penis and testicle size will be associated with autistic, ambidextrous males and the familial left-handed.

4. Autistic males will exhibit more neotenous characteristics while autistic females should show less neoteny than contemporary populations.

5. If larger testicles and increased sperm production are associated with low-testosterone, promiscuous social-structure males, the two variables will be related in that higher-testosterone males will have smaller testicles or lower sperm production.

6. Left-handed males and autistics will produce more sperm.

7. A high percentage of artistic, narcissistic males and females with borderline personality disorder, particularly those from families with left-handers, will have more frequent incidence of autism in their family.

8. Narcissistic males will frequently mate with borderline personality females. The males will have lower testosterone, the females higher testosterone than the average.

9. The children of parents of widely different ethnicities, separated by tens of thousands of years of no interbreeding, should reveal characteristics of their last common progenitor and increased incidence of autism.

10. Among contemporary cultures, patrifocal societies will exhibit increased sexual dimorphism compared to matrifocal cultures.

11. Over the last six thousand years, female brain size will decrease at a smaller rate than male brain size, or even increase over the same period because the female is being selected for an exhibition of neotenous characteristics.

12. Neoteny has dental correlations, with smaller teeth being characteristic of the neotenous smaller jaw. Watching teeth grow smaller over millions of years, might researchers find that they have grown larger in males the last few tens of thousands of years as patrifocal social structure has taken hold?

13. Because a mother’s testosterone level rises with her age and because she has children across the whole arc of her reproductive years, then we might observe a display of personality and physiological features in her children that would roughly reproduce human evolution over a span of eons. An older mother should more frequently have children with maturational delay, including autism.

14. Obese mothers (overweight women exhibit increased testosterone levels), particularly those that are older, should show high incidence of autism in their children.

15. The teeth of males from older mothers should be smaller than the teeth of males of first-born, young mothers. It should be reversed for females.

16. If the low testosterone (T) males and high T females are late born, and high T males and low T females are the oldest children in a family or the first born, then first-borns will mate with first-borns and late-borns will mate with late-borns a higher percentage of the time than would normally occur.

17. In a large family, the male’s teeth will erupt later and later, the females earlier and earlier.

18. Hypothesizing that social structure has political correlates, it would be likely that in a politically conservative family, if liberals would emerge, it would be with the youngest sons and daughters. One would also expect a higher incidence of divorce or serial monogamy with youngest children.

19. Conditions that display maturational delay, such as autism, Asperger’s and stuttering, will appear in males with longer limbs and smaller teeth than in others in their family of origin.

20. Equatorial peoples transplanted to northern climates will display higher percentages of maturational-delayed male children, and maturational-accelerated females, including autistics, with the births congregating in certain seasons.

21. If mother’s allergies influence testosterone levels, for example, hay fever causing testosterone increases, then allergies might be a factor in the cause of autism in her children. Birthdays of these autistics should cluster in certain months.

22. Female infanticide is patrifocal culture’s method for keeping only high T males in the procreation pool. In societies engaging in female infanticide, there are far fewer females than males to mate. The males considered least desirable as husbands by the fathers of the females to be married go mateless. Female infanticide is the co-option of female selection by patrifocal society to maintain a patrifocal society over time.

23. Puberty or progenesis in humans when dropped to a younger age by several years has neurological and cognitive repercussions. In addition to an increase in depression and bi-polar disorder, there is a general curtailment of the final stages of cognitive development.

24. Eating healthy (the caveman diet) brings puberty later and provides a longer time for the brain to grow. Putting autistic children on such a late-puberty-enhancing diet may enhance their ability to connect.

25. Periods of innovation will be preceded by periods of romance, by changes in the selection criteria by which females pick their mates or by a widening of the selection criteria for the ideal male. Shifts to increases in the variety of acceptable features in the procreation population will result in increases in cultural and technical variation. For example, if female infanticide is a tool used for patrifocal cultural stability, decreases in female infanticide over time within a culture will correlate with increases in societal and economic variation.

26. If rhythm and dance were the media driving human evolution through rituals of sexual selection, then the sound and feeling of nonstop rhythm may be necessary to encourage the development of an autistic child. Rhythmic environmental triggers may be essential to the healthy growth of maturational-delayed children. Comparing congenitally deaf left and right handers may reveal an unusually high number of autistics in the left handed group.

27. If neoteny is a powerful force influencing the transformation of society, then we might predict societal increases in transparency, diversity and horizontal communication as features of aboriginals and the very young are prolonged into the character of contemporary times.

28. Teleological interpretations of cultural evolution are often the observations of the dynamics of neoteny. By prolonging the features of the smallest bands into the largest societies–transparency, horizontal communication, equality–society is invested with specific features and a predictable direction.

…

Proceed to author’s FREE book download on this subject (The book is called Evolution, Autism and Social Change). 10 minute introductory video here.

 

Predictions first appeared at Shift Journal on November 30, 2009.

This re-posting (edited slightly for numbering) is part of a series of resurrections from Shift Journal’s archives.

Andrew Lehman on 01/23/12 in Autism, featured | 3 Comments | Read More