The children's Empathy Quotient and Systemizing Quotient: sex differences in typical development and in autism spectrum conditions.
Two quick parent forms give reliable empathy and systemizing scores that highlight sex differences and flag autism traits in 4-11-year-olds.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Auyeung et al. (2009) built two new parent checklists. One tracks empathy. The other tracks systemizing. Kids aged 4-11 filled the forms. Some kids had autism. Some were typical.
The team wanted quick tools to spot sex differences and to separate autism from typical profiles.
What they found
The EQ-C and SQ-C worked. Boys scored higher on systemizing. Girls scored higher on empathy. Kids with autism showed the expected extreme pattern.
The short forms gave clear numbers clinicians can use.
How this fits with other research
Aikat et al. (2025) extends the idea. They used an iPad app to watch gaze and motor moves in 3-8-year-olds. App scores lined up with standard questionnaires. Both studies chase fast, kid-friendly trait markers.
Eussen et al. (2016) used the same recipe. They built a caregiver interview for sensory and repetitive acts. Like Bonnie, they proved it can split autism from other groups.
Agiovlasitis et al. (2025) sounds opposite at first. They show girls score lower on ADOS severity, so girls may be missed. Bonnie also finds sex gaps, but on empathy, not autism severity. The tools look at different slices, so both can be true.
Why it matters
You now have two free checklists that take minutes. Use them during intake to sketch a child’s empathy and systemizing style. Pair the numbers with sensory data from Ben-Sasson et al. (2019) or app data from Aikat et al. (2025) to build a fuller picture. Watch for girls with subtle profiles so they don’t slip through.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children's versions of the Empathy Quotient (EQ-C) and Systemizing Quotient (SQ-C) were developed and administered to n = 1,256 parents of typically developing children, aged 4-11 years. Both measures showed good test-retest reliability and high internal consistency. As predicted, girls scored significantly higher on the EQ-C, and boys scored significantly higher on the SQ-C. A further sample of n = 265 children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) scored significantly lower on the EQ-C, and significantly higher on the SQ-C, compared to typical boys. Empathy and systemizing in children show similar patterns of sex differences to those observed in adults. Children with ASC tend towards a 'hyper-masculinized' profile, irrespective of sex.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2009 · doi:10.1007/s10803-009-0772-x