Broader autism phenotype and nonverbal sensitivity: evidence for an association in the general population.

College students filled out a short self-report form about autism-like traits. They also completed two quick tasks that test how well they read facial expressions and body language.

The researcher wanted to know if students who scored higher on the trait form would also miss more nonverbal cues.

Students with more autism-like traits did worse on both tasks. They missed more subtle facial cues and were slower to pick up body-language hints.

The link showed up on both an obvious test and on a hidden one, so the effect is not just due to guessing.

Day et al. (2021) used the same trait form in adults up to age 70 and found that these traits drop as people get older. Ingersoll (2010) captured the baseline in young adults; the newer work shows the curve keeps falling.

Patton et al. (2020) extended the idea to theory-of-mind tasks across the lifespan. They saw that older adults with high traits had the steepest social-cognition slips, matching the young-adult pattern Brooke first found.

Bishop et al. (2022) conceptually replicated the link in women only, but with speech: higher trait scores predicted less clear vowels. Together these studies say the broad autism phenotype shows up in many small social gaps, not just one.

If you give a social-skills test to a typical adult, check their trait score first. A higher count can explain borderline performance and keeps you from over-pathologising. When you see pragmatic-language errors in older clients, remember the trait fade shown by Day et al. (2021); age alone may help, so target the remaining gaps, not the label.