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The knowledge on autism is expanding every day through academic research and most importantly through the voices of autistic individuals themselves (e.g., blogs, social media).
Autism was first described as a spectrum in 1996 by Lorna Wing who is one of the pioneers in autism research. Since then, autism has been referred to as a spectrum and the current diagnostic manuals describe autism as “autism spectrum disorder” (the use of the term, disorder, is something else that needs to be discussed on another day!). Autistic advocates are increasingly using the term, autism constellation, because the term, autism spectrum, indicates autism is linear when it is actually far more complicated and diverse in its presentations. The complexity and heterogeneity of autism are on both group and individual levels. There is a diversity in how autism is presented in each autistic individual, and also how it is presented differently in the same autistic person in different environments. It is often said, “if you have met one autistic person, you met one autistic person”. He or she is not a representative of autistic people nor a representation of his or her autism, but you did meet one autistic person under one specific circumstance.
Some autistic individual requires more day-to-day support than others. Some autistic people are non-verbal and use alternative ways to communicate with others (e.g., sign language, augmentative and alternative communication). Some are gifted in math. Some are gifted in music. As such, there are varieties of abilities and challenges among autistic individuals, whose heterogeneity makes autism complicated. Therefore, rather than the spectrum which implies the abilities and challenges could be on a linear scale, a constellation is recently thought to be a better word to describe autism.
Historically, autism was first described by medical professionals, then by parents of autistic children, and then by autistic individuals themselves. The idea that constellation is better to describe autism than spectrum was also raised by autistic individuals in the neurodiversity movement (i.e., movement that promotes the idea that there is a diversity in how people experience the world).
Read more about autism constellation here: