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. 2019 Mar;90(2):441-451.
doi: 10.1111/cdev.13170. Epub 2018 Oct 22.

Autism-Related Variation in Reciprocal Social Behavior: A Longitudinal Study

Rachael E Wagner  1 , Yi Zhang  1 , Teddi Gray  1 , Anna Abbacchi  1 , Deporres Cormier  2 , Alexandre Todorov  1 , John N Constantino  1
Affiliations

Autism-Related Variation in Reciprocal Social Behavior: A Longitudinal Study

Rachael E Wagner et al. Child Dev. 2019 Mar.

Abstract

Deficits in reciprocal social behavior are a characterizing feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autism-related variation in reciprocal social behavior (AVR) in the general population is continuously distributed and highly heritable-a function of additive genetic influences that overlap substantially with those which engender clinical autistic syndromes. This is the first long-term prospective study of the stability of AVR from childhood through early adulthood, conducted via serial ratings using the Social Responsiveness Scale, in a cohort-sequential study involving children with ASD, other psychiatric conditions, and their siblings (N = 602, ages = 2.5-29). AVR exhibits marked stability throughout childhood in individuals with and without ASD.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Linear relationship of all available pairings of maternal and teacher Social Responsiveness Scale for individual subjects (N = 1,401 pairs). The shaded light blue around the darker blue linear regression line is the 95% CI.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mean raw maternal baseline total Social Responsiveness Scale scores as a function of group (N = 592). Whiskers represent standard deviation. Horizontal lines inside boxes represent the median scores and the diamonds represent the means.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Stability of randomly selected pairs of successive maternal Social Responsiveness Scale measurements (N = 527 pairs). The shaded light blue around the darker blue regression line is the 95% CI. The dotted line is the 45° line.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Individual childhood trajectories of maternal‐report total Social Responsiveness Scale scores as a function of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnostic status (N = 527).
Figure 5
Figure 5
The pattern of symptom severity over the life course of subjects portrayed as a function of each study group (N per group provided in Table 1). All subjects with at least two maternal assessments are represented (N = 527), with the number of subjects per follow‐up interval provided in Table 4.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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