¿Con quiénes se emparejan los autistas?

Why do autistic people seem to find and partner with each other more often? For years, selective mating in autism was explained by a familiar image: engineers, scientists, and programmers who meet at universities or tech hubs, start families, and concentrate certain traits in their children. But current evidence shows that the phenomenon is much broader than Silicon Valley and is not solely dependent on one profession. In this video, I review what we know about selective mating in autism: Simon Baron-Cohen’s early work on systematization, the large population study by Nordsletten, research that attempted to distinguish between choice, cohabitation, and social proximity, and the most recent findings on trait similarity and genetic evidence. I also explain why two seemingly contradictory figures—a ten- to twelve-fold increased likelihood of two autistic people forming a couple and a trait similarity that explains less than two percent of the variation—actually measure different phenomena. It’s not a mysterious force or an absolute rule. It's about understanding how affinity, shared environments, opportunities for encounter, and genetics play a role in the formation of couples. Because it's one thing to ask why more autism is being diagnosed today. It's quite another to ask why certain people recognize each other, choose each other, and end up together.