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Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

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01-01-2009 | Original Paper

A Preliminary Investigation into the Potential Role of Waist Hip Ratio (WHR) Preference within the Assortative Mating Hypothesis of Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Auteurs: Mark Brosnan, Ian Walker

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders | Uitgave 1/2009

Abstract

Of particular interest to studying the etiology of Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) is the potential for multiple risk factors to combine through non-random mechanisms—assortative mating. Both genetic influences and a high-testosterone prenatal environment have been implicated in the etiology of ASDs, and given that waist-hip ratio (WHR) is indicative of a woman’s circulating testosterone level, a man attracted to higher-than-average WHR women is likely to have a higher-than-average prenatal testosterone exposure for their offspring. We show that whereas fathers of children without ASD show a statistically reliable preference for WHRs at the low end of the normal range, indicative of women with low testosterone levels, fathers of children diagnosed with ASD do not consistently show this preference.

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Note that Henss’s (2000) original stimuli contained six women. Future planned research will contrast photos with silhouettes to explore the impact of WHR stimuli upon these processes; one of Henss’s stimuli (5) was not amenable to this silhouetting process and was therefore omitted to allow future comparisons. Henss also notes that these WHR are approximations as they are calculated from the 2D image.

Note that this analysis is significant despite its being deliberately conservative: its null hypothesis assumed the probability of being first-born or later-born was equal, when in fact, as the mean number of children per family was greater than 2, the probability of any given child being later-born was higher than the probability of their being first-born, making 71% first-born even less likely.

We thank an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this salient point.

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Titel: A Preliminary Investigation into the Potential Role of Waist Hip Ratio (WHR) Preference within the Assortative Mating Hypothesis of Autistic Spectrum Disorders
Auteurs: Mark Brosnan
Ian Walker
Publicatiedatum: 01-01-2009
Uitgeverij: Springer US
Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders / Uitgave 1/2009
Print ISSN: 0162-3257
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-3432
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-008-0615-1

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