Levels of testosterone in the womb may have profound effects on a person’s social development. The findings might also explain why men are four times as likely as women to suffer from autism.
The team has already found that the babies with higher fetal testosterone levels had a smaller vocabulary and made eye contact less often when they were a year old. And a study by another group has shown that eight-year-old girls who had high fetal levels of the hormone performed better at tasks such as mentally rotating a two-dimensional figure.
Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.Like this author?
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 28 May 2004
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
APA Reference
Grohol, J. (2004). Too much testosterone blights social skills. Psych Central. Retrieved on February 14, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2004/05/28/too-much-testosterone-blights-social-skills/
Grohol, J. (2004). Too much testosterone blights social skills. Psych Central. Retrieved on February 14, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2004/05/28/too-much-testosterone-blights-social-skills/
