Autism and Williams syndrome: truly mirror conditions in the socio-cognitive domain?

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Williams Syndrome (WS) are frequently characterized as mirror conditions in the socio-cognitive domain, with ASD entailing restrictive social interests and with WS exhibiting hypersociability. In this review paper, we examine in detail the strong points and deficits of people with ASD or WS in the socio-cognitive domain and show that both conditions also share some common features. Moreover, we explore the neurobiological basis of the social profile of ASD and WS and found a similar mixture of common affected areas and condition-specific impaired regions. We discuss these findings under the hypothesis of a continuum of the socio-cognitive abilities in humans.

Keywords:

• Autism spectrum disorders
• Williams syndrome
• social cognition
• social behavior
• neurobiology
• human evolution

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Authors’ contribution

ABB conceived the paper. AN and ABB conducted the literature search, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. Both authors approved the final version of the manuscript