The distribution of autistic traits across the autism spectrum: evidence for discontinuous dimensional subpopulations underlying the autism continuum.

ABSTRACT:

Background

A considerable amount of research has discussed whether autism and psychiatric/neurodevelopmental conditions in general are best described categorically or dimensionally. In recent years, finite mixture models have been increasingly applied to mixed populations of autistic and non-autistic individuals to answer this question. However, the use of such methods with mixed populations may not be appropriate for two reasons: First, subgroups within mixed populations are often skewed and thus violate mixture models assumptions, which are based on weighted sum of Gaussian distributions. Second, these analyses have, to our knowledge, been solely applied to enriched samples, where the prevalence of the clinical condition within the study sample far exceeds epidemiological estimat

SUBMITTER: Abu-Akel A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6537408 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature