Francesca Happe, an autism researcher and Scientist, has coined the notion of a 'fractionated triad' in order to explain the dimensional nature of autism spectrum traits.
The fractionated triad explains the fact that the core symptoms of autism, namely deficits in communication, interaction, and imagination operate along a severity continuum in the same individual. So for example, a person might display severe obsessive and repetitive behaviour, and be 'low functioning' in this area, while displaying relatively mild symptoms in the social interaction and/or communication domains. Another person might manifest the opposite scenario, and have severe social deficits but minimal repetitive and obsessive behaviour. Therefore it is hard to make severity comparisons between two people on the autism spectrum, because they might be equally impaired by their autism but in very different ways.
The Fractionated Triad model seems to suggest that we move beyond binary categorisations of high and low functioning, and instead focus more on the individual traits and their relative severity for the individual concerned.
Happe has also pointed out that some individuals only have two triad traits, so will not receive an autism diagnosis, and yet may be just as severely affected by the traits they do have as someone with autism.
The traits are also likely to have different modes of inheritance, suggesting that autism results when different genes that code for different characteristics come together in the same person.
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