| Title |
Autism as the Low-Fitness Extreme of a Parentally Selected Fitness Indicator
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Human Nature, August 2008
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s12110-008-9049-x |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Andrew Shaner, Geoffrey Miller, Jim Mintz |
| Abstract |
Siblings compete for parental care and feeding, while parents must allocate scarce resources to those offspring most likely to survive and reproduce. This could cause offspring to evolve traits that advertise health, and thereby attract parental resources. For example, experimental evidence suggests that bright orange filaments covering the heads of North American coot chicks may have evolved for this fitness-advertising purpose. Could any human mental disorders be the equivalent of dull filaments in coot chicks-low-fitness extremes of mental abilities that evolved as fitness indicators? One possibility is autism. Suppose that the ability of very young children to charm their parents evolved as a parentally selected fitness indicator. Young children would vary greatly in their ability to charm parents, that variation would correlate with underlying fitness, and autism could be the low-fitness extreme of this variation. This view explains many seemingly disparate facts about autism and leads to some surprising and testable predictions. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 10 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 2 | 20% |
| Australia | 2 | 20% |
| Spain | 1 | 10% |
| Unknown | 5 | 50% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 7 | 70% |
| Scientists | 2 | 20% |
| Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 1 | 10% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 60 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 2 | 3% |
| United States | 2 | 3% |
| Germany | 1 | 2% |
| Unknown | 55 | 92% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Bachelor | 12 | 20% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 10 | 17% |
| Other | 6 | 10% |
| Researcher | 6 | 10% |
| Professor | 5 | 8% |
| Other | 15 | 25% |
| Unknown | 6 | 10% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 21 | 35% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 7 | 12% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 6 | 10% |
| Social Sciences | 5 | 8% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 5 | 8% |
| Other | 10 | 17% |
| Unknown | 6 | 10% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 09 October 2023.
All research outputs
#6,605,895
of 24,585,148 outputs
Outputs from Human Nature
#314
of 539 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#23,930
of 75,631 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Human Nature
#6
of 11 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,585,148 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 72nd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 539 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 31.7. This one is in the 41st percentile – i.e., 41% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 75,631 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 68% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 11 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 54% of its contemporaries.