I clicked on this article yesterday and I think I found more articles and papers on research on autism spectrum and schizophrenia spectrum.
Article titles
I can’t put links yet so I will just put the article titles.
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Subclinical schizotypal vs. autistic traits show overlapping and diametrically opposed facets in a non-clinical population
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Revisiting the overlap between autistic and schizotypal traits in the non-clinical population using meta-analysis and network analysis
(My sister is studying psychology, so I asked her for help to access the second PDF with her place of study. I found the first PDF online when I searched the title.)
Paragraphs from the first article’s introduction
The introductions can be read for free, but it uses a lot of jargon and can be hard to read.
So I’ll share parts of the first introduction which I found interesting, and try to put them in my own words, to make it easier to read.
Disclaimer: I don’t have a clinical understanding – I’m just translating the jargon into more common words.
Quote
(They use SSD for “schizophrenia spectrum disorders” and ASD for “autism spectrum disorders”)
On the other hand, Crespi and Badcock’s theory places SSD, especially those with positive symptoms (e.g., paranoia, unusual perceptual experience and magical ideation) and ASD at opposite ends of a single spectrum (Crespi and Badcock, 2008)
My interpretation:
Some researchers suggest that aspects of autism spectrum and schizophrenia spectrum are actually opposite ends of the same single spectrum.
(This was interesting to me, to think about.)
Quote
According to this perspective, social cognition and mentalization are underdeveloped in ASD (reduced empathy and mental-state modelling), but hyper-developed to dysfunction in SSD (over-attribution of intentions and paranoia) (Crespi and Badcock, 2008).
Further evidence for this diametrical model includes divergent patterns of brain development (e.g., overgrowth in ASD but undergrowth in SSD) and opposite effects of the same genes implicated in both disorders (Crespi et al., 2009).
My interpretation:
According to this model, autism spectrum and schizophrenia spectrum are opposite ends for social mentalisations, like for empathy and understanding other people.
For people leaning more on the autism spectrum, this may be under-developed – they can have reduced understanding of the intentions of other people.
For people leaning more on the schizophrenia spectrum, this may be over-developed – they can overestimate the intentions of other people, especially negative intentions.
Quote
Moreover, there is increasing evidence supporting the diametrical autism-psychosis model. For example, autistic and positive schizotypal traits may have opposing effects on perspective-taking abilities (⁎Abu-Akel et al., 2015) and saliency cost (Abu-Akel et al., 2017), such that co-occurrence may have a sub-additive effect where individuals with high levels of both autistic and positive schizotypal traits perform similarly to those with low levels of both traits.
Moreover, children with comorbid ASD and SSD have been found to outperform both ASD and SSD groups in attentional set-shifting and social-pragmatic abilities, indicating attenuated impairment and compensatory effect (Abu-Akel et al., 2018).
My interpretation:
It’s possible for people to have both autism spectrum and schizophrenia spectrum conditions, and the effects can cancel each other out a bit for some traits. (Like in social contexts, and changing attention from one thing to another.)