Lifespan Variation in Perceptual Style Along an Autism-Schizotypy Continuum Explains Individual Responses to External Uncertainty

Individuals differ in how they weigh prior knowledge against sensory evidence. This cognitive-perceptual style has been proposed to vary along a continuum from autism- spectrum-like (ASD) to schizophrenia-spectrum-like (SSD) processing. In the present study, we first introduce a refined method for estimating individuals positions on this continuum by re-combining subscales of established autism and schizotypy questionnaires with a newly validated five-factor model for the autism questionnaire (AQ). Second, using a large, age-diverse adult sample (N = 340, age 18-82), we show that cognitive-perceptual style shifts systematically across the lifespan, with older adults exhibiting more sensory-driven, ASD-like profiles. Third, a total of over 160,000 self-paced reading times reveal that individuals with more sensory-driven styles show heightened sensitivity to lexical predictability, particularly in older age. Fourth, individuals intrinsic response dynamics, indexed by autocorrelations of reading times, did not covary with cognitive-perceptual style, suggesting a dissociation between linguistic prediction and non-linguistic temporal dynamics. Finally, in a separate experiment (N = 28, age 21-41), individuals with more ASD-like profiles showed reduced adaptation to latent-state volatility in a voice detection task, especially with increasing age. These findings demonstrate the ASD-SSD continuum to provide a dynamic, lifespan-sensitive framework for understanding individual differences in perceptual inference and predictive processing.