Autism social differences emerge early but can change considerably by adulthood, research suggests - medicalxpress

Credit: Image generated by the editorial team using AI for illustrative purposes.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by differences in behavior, social interactions, communication, and sensory perceptions. Some autistic individuals find communicating and connecting with others more challenging than others, yet how these differences in social functioning emerge remains poorly understood.

Researchers at Beijing Normal University, Peking University, and other institutes recently reviewed and analyzed the findings of 2,622 studies exploring behaviors and experiences associated with autism. Their paper, published in Nature Human Behavior, suggests that social differences emerge when autistic individuals are very young, yet considerable changes can unfold by the time they reach adulthood.

"My lab focuses on social cognitive neuroscience, and we are broadly interested in how the human social mind is organized and develops," Yin Wang, co-senior author of the paper, told Medical Xpress.

"One thing that motivated this project was that previous autism research often focused on only one isolated social ability at a time—such as emotion recognition, theory of mind, or social attention. However, in real life, social behavior is a highly interconnected system. We wanted to understand the bigger picture: how different social functions relate to one another, how they emerge during development, and how they are altered in autism."

A hierarchical model of social functioning in autism. The figure illustrates how early differences in social motivation may cascade into later differences in more complex social abilities across development. Credit: Li et al., Nature Human Behaviour (2026).

A large-scale review and meta-analysis

Wang and his colleagues performed one of the largest meta-analyses and systematic reviews to date focusing on social functioning in autism. Their paper analyzes and synthesizes the findings of 2,622 studies carried out over the course of 35 years.

"Our goal was not simply to summarize findings, but to reveal the organizational architecture of social functioning in autism," explained Wang. "We reviewed behavioral studies published between 1990 and 2025 that compared autistic and neurotypical individuals across many aspects of social functioning. Altogether, the dataset covered participants from 32 countries, ranging from 6-month-old infants to adults in their 50s."

In their analyses, the researchers focused on 22 dimensions of social functioning, including social attention, imitation, empathy, theory of mind, social communication, and relationship management. Instead of merely trying to explore why autistic people exhibit social differences, they examined how earlier studies were designed, the tasks and measurement strategies they relied on, when these differences emerged, and sociocultural factors that influenced their development.

"Methodologically, we combined large-scale systematic review, quantitative meta-analysis, moderator analysis, and meta-analytic structural equation modeling," said Wang. "This allowed us not only to estimate overall group differences, but also to investigate how different social abilities are interconnected across development."

The results of the team's analyses suggest that social functioning in autism is not a random or fragmented trait. Instead, the social functioning of autistic people appears to be hierarchically organized, with social differences emerging early and changing across different stages of human development.

"We found that social differences tend to emerge in a sequence from early social motivation to later higher-order social skills, suggesting cascading developmental effects across the lifespan," said Wang.

"Moreover, social functioning in autism appears to be shaped not only by biology, but also by culture and society. For example, countries with higher perceived social support tended to show smaller social differences between autistic and neurotypical individuals, whereas more competitive and masculinity-oriented cultures showed larger differences."

Implications for future research and support services

The results of this large-scale review study suggest that social functioning in autism is culturally shaped and emerges hierarchically, dynamically changing over different developmental stages. Moreover, different aspects of social functioning appear to be deeply interconnected, collectively influencing how autistic individuals relate to others.

In the future, the team's findings could help to devise new targeted interventions and services designed to support autistic people in their interactions with others. They might also help to develop personalized therapeutic strategies that account for social differences in autism, as well as new neurodiversity-informed public policy.

"One important next step will be to build a comprehensive and standardized assessment battery for social functioning in autism," said Wang. "Current clinical tools often focus on only a few domains and may miss the broader organization of social abilities. Also, many of them are outdated and insensitive to detecting social differences. We hope to optimize them."

As part of their next studies, Wang and his colleagues also plan to develop more precise, sensitive, and multidimensional tools to characterize the social profiles of different people with autism. These tools could eventually be used to plan and implement personalized interventions tailored around the needs of different individuals.

"We are also interested in combining behavioral assessments with neuroimaging and computational modeling to better understand the brain mechanisms underlying social development in autism," added Wang. 

by Ingrid Fadelli, Medical Xpress

edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Robert Egan 

Source: Autism social differences emerge early but can change considerably by adulthood, research suggests