SynthesisAutism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research2026
Does the Extreme Male Brain Hypothesis of Autism Apply More to Females Than Males? A Systematic and Meta-Analytic Approach.
Synthesis in Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Sex-dependent vulnerability to early-life phthalates exposure and autism spectrum disorders: a systematic review.Frontiers in child and adolescent psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Group-wise sparse coding for the discovery of functional connectivity-based biomarkers in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The extreme male brain (EMB) hypothesis posits that autism risk is mediated by high systemizing and low empathizing. This hypothesis has accrued extensive support, but the degree to which it applies in females compared to males, and the relative extent to which autism is associated with empathizing compared to systemizing, is unclear. Systematic review and meta-analyses of studies measuring the empathy quotient (EQ), the systemizing quotient (SQ), and the autism quotient (AQ), among individuals with autism and neurotypical individuals, were used to address these questions. Analyses of results from 34 studies indicated that: (1) Females show larger proportional differences in EQ and SQ between ASD and NT individuals than do males, (2) EQ shows larger proportional differences between autism spectrum (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) individuals than does SQ, (3) sex differences in EQ and SQ are highly attenuated among individuals with ASD, especially for SQ in females, (4) the regressions of EQ and SQ on AQ show significantly steeper slopes among individuals with ASD than in NT individuals, and (5) across studies, EQ and SQ are inversely associated among individuals with ASD, but not in NT individuals. These results provide new insights into the causes of ASD and its male bias.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.