Unravelling the phenotypic tangle of autistic, schizotypal and social anxiety traits: A Network Analysis

The current paper investigates the interactions and factor structure of autistic, schizotypal, and social anxiety personality traits through the lens of a network model. An Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA) on a network of these traits revealed three communities (or factors), of which two were mixed (autistic and schizotypal phenotypes) and one was ‘pure’ (social anxiety). A Network Analysis (NA) revealed several central traits that collectively reflected the social and interpersonal impairments of the three disorders. The current results suggest that a combination of recent network- and traditional factor-analytic techniques may present a fruitful approach to understanding the underlying structure as well as relation of different psychopathologies.