• flamingo_pinyata
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    13 hours ago

    I strongly suspect the modern “spectrum” is just grouping and labeling certain personality profiles that have always existed in roughly similar proportions. Meaning that it’s not the proportion that is increasing, it’s that we chose to define certain combinations of human traits as ASD.

    On the whole this labeling is probably useful since more people will get the support they need. But the point of delineation is mostly arbitrary.

    • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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      12 hours ago

      Same way there’s suddenly more lefthanders or LGBT+ people now that we don’t beat it out of them as much anymore.

    • webghost0101
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      12 hours ago

      Autism is indeed just a label how the medical world identifies us.

      Neurodivergent is how we identify ourselves and i believes it fits your observations very well.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity

      This map likely only looks at diagnosis and ignores dyslexic and adhd types.

    • troed@fedia.io
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      12 hours ago

      Strongly heriditary. When you married within the local village the chance/risk of your spouse also being on the spectrum was lower than when you matchmake through online services and hundreds of dates.

      /non-diagnosed GenX with two out of three kids diagnosed so far

      • The_v@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Genotype x Environment = Phenotype.

        So is it genetic background or is it your neurodivergent modeling of the behavior to them?

        FYI it can’t be determined without a much more in-depth genetic studies. This is especially true with complex multi-gene interaction traits like autism seems to be.

        • troed@fedia.io
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          6 hours ago

          Wife is a psychologist working in diagnosis of ADHD and autism. I’ll go with the knowledge I’ve gotten from there. Thanks.