Autism spectrum has no clear cut-off point, research news

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Autism spectrum has no clear cut-off point, research suggests

New study published in Nature Genetics indicates that genes predisposing people to autism could influence social skills in the wider population


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/21/autism-spectrum-has-no-clear-cut-off-point-research-suggests-nature-genetics

It looks like the entire article only focuses on the social skills aspect of autism. That doesn't mean that autism has no clear cut-off point, but that social (pragmatic) communication disorder does. It doesn't mention at all the restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities that is necessary for a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

Sometimes I think Social Media diminishes Social Skill. In and out of The Spectrum.

Inevitably, it's difficult to "create" an objective demarcation point for Spectrum/Non-Spectrum.

It frequently depends upon the views of the individual diagnostician.

One might only believe Classically-Autistic people are actually autistic.

Another might have a very broad view of the Spectrum.

Please help me understand?
Are you writing about subjective clinician diagnosis based on their notes versus use of a diagnostic tool to be scored and tallied

Both.

One can also have an subjective interpretation of the diagnostic criteria.

One clinician's autism might be another's ADHD.

That's why one has to try to obtain a diagnosis from a person who seems attuned to today's autism.

Otherwise, a clinician might tell a prospective patient: "You can't be autistic: you're talking to me now!"

My clinician told me he was going to consult with his colleagues before making a diagnosis and write up.

That's always a good idea.

So according to this, it is simply a set of inborn personalities of extreme extroversion/social ineptitude, with social skills so bad to the extent that it got socially constructed as a psychiatric disorder under the label of Autism.

So it's not a genetic disorder like Down Syndrome, Fragile X or Rett Syndrome where specific genes (deletion or mutation) are the cause of them.

It is simply a variation of inborn personalities, there are babies who are born very social while others don't...

That doesn't explain the mental retardation of LFAs though.

This is not news. This has been known for a couple decades, at least. For example, see this study from 1997. Heck, even Kanner noticed that his patients' parents showed autistic traits, although he wasn't sure if it was genetic or if the parents' behaviour caused the child's autism.

And although this study focused on social skills, repetitive behaviour shows the same pattern. All aspects of autism vary dimensionally, not categorically.

So Asperger is not something "special" that many try to portray here.

This is why dispite posting on here often I have never felt comfortable with the Wrong Planet idea and believe Autism is at least in part a natural human varient.

Yeah, this study indicates that the "spectrum" is not within Autism - Autism is a part of spectrum of the continuum of human variations.

What about the sensory issues?

I agree about the idea of autism as part of natural human variation. It's the rest of the world's attitude to people who are different that causes some of the difficulties for hfa. And there are some great books about the idea that the world needs autism because of the distinctive traits. For example, Digby Tantam's book. And there was a nice piece in a UK Aspergers society newsletter recently written as if the majority were on the spectrum and it was a problem if a person was not.
I think there is also a notion that people on the spectrum are actually wired differently, without a kind of neural pruning of extra connections that happens in NT development. That model fits well with the idea of spectrum that fades out without a clear cut off point.

To the proposition that the Autism Spectrum has no "clear cut-off point," I would say that it does. That point would be when an assessed individual doesn't exhibit the "triad of impairments" that the diagnostic criteria expects to find among autistic individuals.