Evidence for a Broad Autism Phenotype

Abstract

The broad autism phenotype implies the existence of a continuum ranging from individuals displaying almost no autistic traits to severely impaired diagnosed individuals. Recent studies have linked this variation in autistic traits to several domains of functioning. However, studies focusing on social-communicational traits associated with autism often suffer from two problems. First, they examine very specific behaviours, not taking the broad range of behaviours social functioning is comprised of into account. Second, most studies compare individuals scoring at the upper and lower extremes of the continuum, neglecting the natural range of autistic trait scores. The present study accommodates for these limitations by examining the link between self-reported autistic traits and a broad self-report measure of social functioning across individuals exhibiting a natural range of autistic traits. The results show that after tackling the discussed limitations, autistic traits still predict the amount of social behaviour people exhibit and the level of discomfort they experience when doing so. The amount of social behaviour and the experienced discomfort were especially related to autistic traits in the social and attention switching domains. The findings were still significant after controlling for the conceptual overlap with the social domain of the autism measure. These findings support the broad autism phenotype by showing how a continuous measure of autistic traits is related to a continuous measure of social functioning.

Non-Clinical Autistic Traits Correlate With Social and Ethical but Not With Financial and Recreational Risk-Taking

“…First, it aims to replicate the findings in the broader autism spectrum, that is, along a continuum ranging from individuals who report few autistic traits to individuals who report many (Wing, 1988;Baron-Cohen et al, 2001). Previous research on this broader spectrum has demonstrated that clinical characteristics are (to a lesser extent) also observed in the general population (De Groot and Van Strien, 2017). The present study examines whether this holds for risk-taking too.…”

Interpersonal similarity of autistic traits predicts friendship quality

“…With regard to this weak negative interrelation, our results are in line with previous research, which has shown an association between high individual autistic traits and lower general satisfaction about interpersonal relationships, such as increased feelings of loneliness, lower frequency of social behaviors and lower satisfaction when they engage in such behaviors (cf. Reed et al , 2016 ; De Groot and Van Strien, 2017 ). Consequently, here, we did not demonstrate that individual traits are irrelevant, but that their impact is too low to be significant in our analyses of real-life friendships.…”

The Relation Between Autistic Traits, the Degree of Synaesthesia, and Local/Global Visual Perception

“…First, the study is performed in a neurotypical population (i.e. in a population of individuals not classified as having synaesthesia or ASD), using continuous measures of the degree of synaesthesia and of autistic traits and thereby treating ASD and synaesthesia as dimensional constructs (Baron-Cohen et al 2001;Cohen Kadosh and Henik 2007;Cuskley et al 2019;De Groot and Van Strien 2017). Second, the current study is the first to specifically assess local/global perception in relation to both autistic traits and synaesthesia in the same study population.…”

“…One commonality is that synaesthesia and ASD are both considered to be dimensional rather than categorical constructs, although for both conditions this issue remains continuously under debate. Over the last decades, an increasing amount of evidence has been collected that suggests ASD to fall on a continuum, ranging from a low to high degree of autistic traits (Baron- Cohen et al 2001;De Groot and Van Strien 2017;Hoekstra et al 2008). The quantitative nature of ASD has been termed the broader autism phenotype (BAP).…”