A heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition involving characteristic differences in social communication and restricted or repetitive patterns of behaviour or interests. Sensory differences and varying support needs matter; an autistic individual’s empathy, language or mental health cannot be inferred from the label alone.
A developmental proposal linking differences in social orienting, reward or engagement to later social experience. Reduced observed participation cannot by itself distinguish reduced interest from sensory overload, anxiety or exclusion.
A proposal emphasizing differences in integrating information into wider context or in local/global processing style. It must make specific predictions rather than redescribe every difficulty as lack of context.
A proposal that dysfunction of action observation–execution matching explains autistic social differences. Its broad form requires direct evidence connecting the mechanism to the relevant behaviour, not merely atypical activation or an imitation score.
