[hackpert]

While this certainly seems to be redefining ASD as other commenters seem to suggest and we can debate if that is a good thing or not, it seems like it would be relatively straightforward to test the validity of this theory (perhaps not easy but straightforward.) Simply look at autism occurrence rates in countries where partner choice is still socially determined such as India/Pakistan/parts of the Arab World(?) etc. and see if there is any correlation between some arbitrarily defined scale of partner choice freedom and ASD rate, after factoring out individual genetics :S.

PS. I haven’t read the actual paper yet so I don’t know if they have already done this.