Quantitative autistic traits ascertained in a national survey of 22 529 <scp>J</scp>apanese schoolchildren

Abstract

This study provides evidence of the continuous nature of autistic symptoms measured by the SRS, a validated quantitative trait measure. The findings reveal how paradigms for diagnosis that rest on arbitrarily imposed categorical cutoffs can result in substantial variation in prevalence estimation, especially when measurements used for case assignment are not standardized for a given population.