People who show strong autism traits tend to have weak connections between an area of the brain involved in introspection and social memories and other brain regions, according to a study published 5 April in PLoS One.

A 36-question survey detects features of autism in as much as 23 percent of parents of children with autism and 9 percent of control parents, researchers reported 20 February in Autism Research.

Researchers studying autism prevalence should take into account the continuous nature of autism symptoms in the general population, says John Constantino.

Families of individuals with autism may share their abnormal patterns of brain activation, according to a study published 3 December in Molecular Autism.

Members of families that have multiple children with autism have more features of the disorder than do those from families that have only one child with autism, according to a study published 2 November in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Infant siblings of children with autism show more repetitive movements as 1-year-olds than do children who do not have a family history of the disorder, according to a study published 19 October in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Family members of individuals with autism process faces and scenes differently than do controls, according to two new studies, one of them published in October. This suggests that visual processing may be an autism endophenotype — a measurable symptom that represents part of the genetic risk of a disorder.

The families of children with specific language impairment do not have a history of autism, according to a study published 28 August in Genes, Brain and Behavior. The results bolster the theory that the two disorders have independent risk factors.

Babies later diagnosed with autism tend to have a heightened response to sights and sounds in their first year of life, and smile and cuddle less as toddlers than controls do, according to a paper published 24 August in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Women who have a history of bipolar disorder or depression are more likely to have a child with Asperger syndrome than classic autism, according to a study published in the 2012 issue of Autism Research and Treatment.