The Causes of Individual Differences in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by various symptoms including impaired social interactions, unusually repetitive behaviors, and highly restricted interests etc. People with ASD differ significantly on their clinical profiles and the causes of such individual differences are not yet fully understood. The present paper provides an overview of the causes of individual differences in ASD from three different perspectives: genetic, environmental, and neurobiological perspectives. The present paper also describes one study design in detail within each perspective (i.e., classical twin design, epidemiological case-control design, and magnetic resonance imaging), and explains how each study design is informative about the causes of ASD.