Question: As autism is often refered to as being a 'spectrum', do you think that everyone is slightly on the spectrum?

Amy Pearson answered on 12 Jun 2018:

Fantastic question.
The short answer is that I dont think everyone is on the spectrum.
The long answer is that everyone has ‘traits’ or little things about themselves that are associated with autism (like being really passionate about a certain subject, or sometimes finding social situations difficult, or struggling with loud places), but this doesnt make them autistic. We think that the brains of autistic people are connected a little differently, and this is what allows them to experience the world as they do, whereas the brains of non-autistic people arent wired like this.
However, and this is a big but- we do know that some non-autistic people show so many autistic traits, that they fall into what is called the ‘broader autism phenotype’. This means that they show a lot of the same behaviours (and thinking patterns) as autistic people, without having enough traits to be diagnosed as autistic.
There is still so much we don’t know about autism, and hopefully some day we will know a lot more. Diagnostic procedures arent quite as simple as ‘autistic’ and ‘non-autistic’, but by saying everyone is a little bit autistic, we minimise the difficulties and differences that some autistic people experience, which is not cool.