Researchers from China and several international institutions have completed one of the largest reviews ever conducted on autism and social behavior.
Their findings suggest that social differences in autistic individuals begin very early in childhood but continue changing throughout life, influenced not only by biology but also by culture and society.
The study was published in Nature Human Behaviour and analyzed 2,622 studies conducted over a period of 35 years.
Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects communication, behavior, sensory experiences, and social interaction. Some autistic people experience only mild challenges in daily life, while others may require significant support.
Although autism has been widely studied, scientists still do not fully understand how social differences develop over time or why social experiences can vary so greatly between autistic and non-autistic individuals.
According to Professor Yin Wang from Beijing Normal University, one reason progress has been slow is that many earlier studies focused on only one small area of social functioning at a time.
Researchers might study eye contact, emotion recognition, empathy, or communication separately, but real social interaction depends on many connected abilities working together.
The new study aimed to understand this larger system instead of examining only isolated pieces.
To do this, the research team gathered findings from thousands of earlier studies involving autistic and non-autistic participants from 32 countries.
The participants ranged from six-month-old infants to adults in their 50s.
The researchers examined 22 different social functions, including social attention, imitation, emotional understanding, empathy, communication, relationships, and theory of mind.
Theory of mind is the ability to understand that other people may think and feel differently from ourselves.
Using advanced statistical methods, the scientists analyzed how these social abilities were connected across development.
The results showed that social functioning in autism appears to follow a hierarchical developmental structure.
The researchers found that early differences in social motivation may gradually influence later social abilities.
For example, if a child is less interested in social interaction during infancy, this may reduce opportunities for social learning and practice later on. Over time, this could affect communication skills, emotional understanding, and relationship development.
The researchers described this as a cascading developmental process.
Importantly, the study found that social functioning in autism is not static or unchanging.
Different social abilities may strengthen, weaken, or shift during different stages of life.
This means autism social experiences may continue evolving throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood rather than remaining fixed from birth.
One of the most striking findings involved the role of culture.
Countries where people reported stronger social support systems tended to show smaller social differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals.
Meanwhile, more competitive cultures and societies with stronger masculinity-oriented values tended to show larger differences.
The researchers believe this suggests that social environments can shape how autism is experienced.
In supportive environments, autistic individuals may have more opportunities to participate socially, develop confidence, and receive understanding from others.
In more demanding or competitive social systems, social difficulties may become more noticeable or stressful.
The findings challenge older views that treated autism entirely as a biological condition isolated from social context.
Instead, the study supports a more complex understanding where biology, development, environment, and culture all interact together.
The researchers hope the findings will eventually improve autism support services and clinical care.
Current assessment tools often measure only a limited number of social skills and may miss broader patterns of strengths and challenges.
Professor Wang said future research should focus on building more detailed and sensitive tools that can better capture the diversity of autistic social experiences.
The team also plans to combine behavioral studies with neuroimaging and computational modeling to better understand the brain systems involved in social development.
In the future, these approaches may help researchers design more personalized interventions that fit the needs of individual autistic people rather than using the same methods for everyone.
The findings also support the growing neurodiversity movement, which encourages society to recognize autism as a natural form of human variation rather than viewing autistic people only through deficits and impairments.
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