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Childhood Academic Performance: A Potential Marker of Genetic Liability to Autism

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Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a heritable neurodevelopmental disorder, confers genetic liability that is often expressed among relatives through subclinical, genetically-meaningful traits, or endophenotypes. For instance, relative to controls, parents of individuals with ASD differ in language-related skills, with differences emerging in childhood. To examine ASD-related endophenotypes, this study investigated developmental academic profiles among clinically unaffected siblings of individuals with ASD (n = 29). Lower performance in language-related skills among siblings mirrored previously-reported patterns among parents, which were also associated with greater subclinical ASD-related traits in themselves and their parents, and with greater symptom severity in their sibling with ASD. Findings demonstrated specific phenotypes, derived from standardized academic testing, that may represent childhood indicators of genetic liability to ASD in first-degree relatives.

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Abbreviations

ASD:

Autism spectrum disorder

ADOS-2:

Autism diagnostic observation schedule, 2nd Edition

BAP:

Broad autism phenotype

ITBS:

The Iowa test of basic skills and Iowa test of educational development

PRS-SA:

Pragmatic Rating Scale-school age

PRS:

Pragmatic Rating Scale

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Funding

This study was funded by Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (Grant Nos. R01DC010191, R03MH107834, P30DC012035) to Molly Losh; National Science Foundation (Grant No. BCS-0820394) to Molly Losh; Autism Speaks (Grant No. 1337) to Molly Losh.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, 2240 N Campus Dr., Evanston, IL, 60208, USA

    Janna Guilfoyle, Molly Winston, Kritika Nayar, Lauren Bush & Molly Losh

  2. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

    John Sideris

  3. St. John’s University, New York, USA

    Gary E. Martin

  4. University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA

    Tom Wassink

Authors
  1. Janna Guilfoyle
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  2. Molly Winston
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  3. John Sideris
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  4. Gary E. Martin
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  5. Kritika Nayar
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  6. Lauren Bush
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  7. Tom Wassink
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  8. Molly Losh
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Contributions

ML conceived the study and oversaw all data collection, analyses, and manuscript preparation. JG, MW, JS, KN, and LB assisted in data acquisition, processing, and analysis, and contributed to manuscript preparation. GEM and TW assisted with data interpretation and manuscript preparation. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Molly Losh.

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Conflict of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Study procedures were approved by the Northwestern University Institutional Review Board (IRB).

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Adult participants provided written consent. Participants under the age of 18 or whose parents maintained guardianship were consented via parent consent and assent.

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Guilfoyle, J., Winston, M., Sideris, J. et al. Childhood Academic Performance: A Potential Marker of Genetic Liability to Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 53, 1989–2005 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05459-5

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