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.