[h0l0cube]

The modern understanding of ASD is that it's a cluster of traits, and generalized into the broader autism phenotype. I think this paper is taking some of those traits and understanding the selection mechanisms that increase their prevalence, and also builds upon earlier work suggesting that ASD could be caused by the amplification of typically attractive and useful traits by sexual selection.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23713510/

[dd36]

I have a hypothesis: autism prevalence is up because of the “back to sleep” campaign, which babies hate because it massively decreases sleep quality. This reduced sleep quality adversely affects brain development.

[h0l0cube]

I didn't know prevalence to be up, or that an increase in prevalence could be easily disentangled from better diagnosis due to increased awareness of autism. Do you have data on this increase?