The link between autism and skills such as engineering, maths, physics andcomputing - A reply to Jarrold and Routh, Autism, 1998, 2 (3): 281-9

In the first edition of this journal, we published a paper reporting that f athers and grandfathers of children with autism were over-represented in th e field of engineering (Baron-Cohen et al., 1997). This result was interpre ted as providing supporting evidence for the folk-psychology/folk-physics t heory of autism. After carrying out further analyses on the same data, Jarr old and Routh (1998) found that fathers of children with autism were also o ver-represented in accountancy and science. They suggested that these resul ts could either provide additional support for the folk-psychology/folk-phy sics theory or be accounted for by an over-representation of professionals amongst the fathers of children with autism. Here we present evidence that engineers are still over-represented among fathers of children with autism, even taking into account the professional bias.