Demographic, genetic, neuroimaging, and behavioral correlates of short social responsiveness scale in a large pediatric cohort

Huang, L, Huang, R, Sui, G, Du, W ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5115-7214, Zhou, L, Luo, Q, Ren, T and Li, F, 2025. Demographic, genetic, neuroimaging, and behavioral correlates of short social responsiveness scale in a large pediatric cohort. Translational Psychiatry, 15: 396. ISSN 2158-3188

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Abstract

The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) is an established tool for screening autism. An increasing number of studies have utilized the SRS in the general population as an outcome measure to gain insight into the etiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, SRS scores have not been well characterized in large pediatric cohorts, particularly in relation to their demographic, genetic, neuroimaging, and comorbidity profiles, or how these patterns compare to those observed in clinically diagnosed ASD. This study included 9788 non-ASD children and 182 autistic children aged 9-11 years from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Generalized linear mixed-effect models were applied to evaluate the associations of short social responsiveness scale (SSRS) with a spectrum of demographic, genetic, neuroimaging, and behavioral characteristics. We estimated the heritability of SSRS using a subsample of twin and sibling data. Our finding revealed that children with higher SSRS exhibited a higher male-to-female ratio. SSRS had a high heritability of 0.52 (95% CI, 0.45-0.63), and higher SSRS scores were correlated with increased polygenic risk for ASD (P < 0.001). Neuroimaging analyses identified both overlapping and unique neurobiological underpinnings, with sex-specific variations in structural and functional connectivity similar to those observed in ASD. Higher SSRS scores were linked to lower fluid intelligence, more behavioral problems, more sleep problems, and more psychotic-like symptoms. These findings highlight both the overlap and distinction between patterns reflected in SSRS scores and those observed in clinical ASD, highlighting the need for caution when interpreting findings only utilizing SRS as the outcome for autistic-like trait. Translational Psychiatry (2025) 15:396 ; https://doi.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Translational Psychiatry
Creators:	Huang, L., Huang, R., Sui, G., Du, W., Zhou, L., Luo, Q., Ren, T. and Li, F.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	10 October 2025
Volume:	15
ISSN:	2158-3188
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1038/s41398-025-03648-1 DOI 2514160 Other
Rights:	© the author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	27 Oct 2025 11:05
Last Modified:	27 Oct 2025 11:05
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54626

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