Three distinct categories of traits best characterize autism, according to a study of more than 6,000 children1.
Children with autism or other conditions fall on a spectrum of ability in each of these categories — problems with social interactions, communication difficulties and repetitive behaviors, the results suggest. And autistic children tend to be at one end of each spectrum.
The new findings support the hypothesis that each of these autism traits is inherited independently.
“We’re seeing that autism truly is dimensional,” says co-lead researcher Matthew Lerner, associate professor of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics at Stony Brook University in New York. “You can have two people who present really quite differently but are still experiencing autism.”
The analysis pits the model alongside 43 other possibilities. The other models vary in the number of categories of traits and in how people with and without autism measure on each one.
The results of this creative statistical analysis align with how autism presents in the clinic, says James McPartland, associate professor of child psychology and psychiatry at Yale University, who was not involved in the study.
“You need to understand [autism] in terms of an individual person’s profile of strengths and vulnerabilities,” McPartland says.
Distinct features:
Lerner’s team analyzed parents’ responses on a 12-item questionnaire called the Child and Adolescent Symptom Inventory-4R. They looked at responses from parents of 3,825 individuals, ages 6 to 22. The participants had been referred to a clinic for possible developmental disability or a psychiatric issue. They are diagnosed with a range of conditions; 1,043 have autism.
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