The Spectrum team highlights five topics that distinguished autism research in 2020: diversity in data, gene therapies, subtyping, social circuitry and the ‘autism gene’ debate.

Autistic children’s traits track with subtle, autism-like behaviors in their mothers; women with these traits may also carry a genetic predisposition to the condition.

Conversations between an autistic and a typical person involve less smiling and more mismatched facial expressions than do interactions between two typical people.

About 0.7 percent of children in China aged 6 to 12 — and 1.15 percent of 10- and 11-year-olds in Greece — have autism, figures that are consistent with prevalence estimates elsewhere.

Like so many other events this year, autism’s biggest annual conference — the International Society for Autism Research meeting — was forced to go virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A common autism screening tool misses more than 70 percent of autistic toddlers but flags more than 80 percent of non-autistic toddlers who have intellectual disability.

Nearly half of autistic children may show substantial changes in the severity of their autism traits from ages 3 to 6, according to a new study.

A new study highlights the challenge of distinguishing genetic variants linked to autism from those associated with cognitive development.

Doctors often conflate autism and intellectual disability, and no wonder: The biological distinction between them is murky. Scientific progress depends on knowing where the conditions intersect — and part ways.

Adults with autism vary enormously in their quality of life, and two factors may explain most of this variation.