All those are abilities related to our capacity to interact appropriately with other people socially and are abilities that are supposedly deficient in people who are autistic,

For some emotions, such as anger, we see a dip in the ability to perform these tasks around puberty,

Does this explain the Kevin phenomenon? It might be behind the social ineptitude of early adolescents, the seeming inability to understand the two expressions that have this dip most strikingly - sadness and anger.

It may be that they are simply unable to read them.

It looks as though when the brain reorganizes itself during puberty, rewires itself as a consequence of the hormonal changes presumably taking place at that time...we actually get worse at recognizing facial expressions and remembering faces we have seen before than we were 5 years previously,

This perhaps won't come as a surprise to teachers; they say 'We do feel boys are less socially aware'. But this is the first evidence that there is a substantial difference in the ability to read emotions,

At six years, 70% of boys are below the mean for girls; so in other words, 70% of boys are worse than 50% of girls,

Teenagers really do get 'dumber' in their social intelligence around the time of puberty,

The theory that autism is the extreme of the male brain is not strongly supported by these data,

There is deterioration for some facial expressions, particularly sadness and anger, at puberty for boys and girls. If anything it's actually worse for girls.