Traits contributing to the autistic spectrum

It is increasingly recognised that traits associated with autism reflect a spectrum with no clear boundary between typical and atypical behaviour. Dimensional traits are needed to investigate the broader autism phenotype. Ninety-three individual measures reflecting components of social, communicatio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2010-09, Vol.5 (9), p.e12633-e12633
Main Authors: Steer, Colin D, Golding, Jean, Bolton, Patrick F
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age
Analysis
Autism
Autistic Disorder - genetics
Autistic Disorder - psychology
Behavior
Child
Child, Preschool
Children
Children & youth
CNTNAP2 gene
Communication
Ethics
Exploration
Factor analysis
Female
Folklore
Genetic effects
Genetics and Genomics/Complex Traits
Genotype & phenotype
Humans
Infant
Inhibition (psychology)
Language
Language acquisition
Learning
Male
Neurological Disorders/Neuropsychiatric Disorders
Neurology
Pediatrics and Child Health/Child Development
Pleiotropy
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
Population
Principal components analysis
Psychiatry
Quantitative Trait, Heritable
Social Behavior
Social inhibition
Stereotyped behavior
Studies
Twins
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Summary:It is increasingly recognised that traits associated with autism reflect a spectrum with no clear boundary between typical and atypical behaviour. Dimensional traits are needed to investigate the broader autism phenotype. Ninety-three individual measures reflecting components of social, communication and repetitive behaviours characterising autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) were identified between the ages of 6 months and 9 years from the ALSPAC database. Using missing value imputation, data for 13,138 children were analysed. Factor analysis suggested the existence of 7 factors explaining 85% of the variance. The factors were labelled: verbal ability, language acquisition, social understanding, semantic-pragmatic skills, repetitive-stereotyped behaviour, articulation and social inhibition. Four factors (1, 3, 5 and 7) were specific to ASD being more strongly associated with this phenotype than other co-morbid conditions while other factors were more associated with learning difficulties and specific language impairment. Nevertheless, all 7 factors contributed independently to the explanation of ASD (p
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0012633