Autism and Twin Studies (2)

Professor Pat Levitt explains that twin studies of autism show that it is a highly genetic disorder.

The genetic basis for autism, in terms of autism vulnerability, is clear. The best way to look at that is from studies of identical twins. If you look at identical twins, if one twin has autism, the chance of the other twin having autism is about eighty percent. It’s very, very high. As a comparison to schizophrenia, if one twin has schizophrenia, the likelihood of the other twin having it is about 45 percent which is still relatively high. But compared to autism, you can see autism seems to have a larger genetic component to it.