Science-based
Born from lived experience. Built on research. PairPattern© grew out of 17 shared years in which we found the right words for each other far too late. The questions, the dimensions, and the scoring behind them stand on a different foundation: peer-reviewed research on autism, ADHD, camouflaging, and the gender-specific differences in diagnosis and everyday life. On this page, we lay that foundation open, source by source.
Research over the last 15 years has fundamentally expanded our picture of neurodivergence. Autism diagnoses among adults in the US more than tripled between 2011 and 2022 (Grosvenor et al., 2024), and the share of late-identified women is growing fastest of all (Harrop et al., 2024). Behind these numbers are couples who experienced years of friction before finding an explanation.
PairPattern© translates this state of research into 50 everyday questions, so that exactly these couples can recognize and discuss their patterns earlier. Each of the ten dimensions traces back to described, studied phenomena.
Literal understanding and direct language are among the best-described communication traits on the spectrum. Research on the double-empathy problem shows: misunderstandings arise between two communication styles, and both sides translate.
Milton, 2012 · Crompton et al., 2020Masking, the conscious or unconscious adaptation of one's own behavior, is measurable with validated instruments (CAT-Q) and comprehensively described in systematic reviews. Research links intensive Masking to exhaustion and late identification, especially in women.
Hull et al., 2019 · Cook et al., 2021Roughly every second autistic person experiences alexithymia, difficulty identifying and naming one's own feelings. Feeling intensely and struggling to name it explicitly go together, and this very tension is what the dimension captures.
Kinnaird et al., 2019Sensory hyper- and hyposensitivity has been an official DSM-5 diagnostic criterion since 2013, and its prevalence on the spectrum is meta-analytically documented. Touch, sounds, and stimulus density shape closeness in couple relationships directly.
Ben-Sasson et al., 2009The need for predictability and the strain of plan changes are described as core traits, and research on intolerance of uncertainty explains the mechanism behind them.
Boulter et al., 2014Studies of late-diagnosed women show how strongly years of puzzling over one's own difference shape the self-image, and how relieving an explanation can be.
Leedham et al., 2020Research has refined the old cliché of an empathy deficit: many people on the spectrum absorb the emotional states of others intensely and need time for themselves afterwards.
Fletcher-Watson & Bird, 2020Intense interests are linked to wellbeing, competence, and flow. In relationships they become a resource as soon as both partners understand the role they play in the energy budget.
Grove et al., 2018Autism and ADHD frequently overlap and share genetic foundations. Impulsivity, openness to stimuli, and shifting attention therefore belong in every complete couple profile.
Rommelse et al., 2010Executive functions such as planning, prioritizing, and estimating time often work differently in neurodivergent minds, a finding well documented in meta-analyses. In everyday couple life, this dimension governs punctuality, household, and felt reliability.
Demetriou et al., 2018Deliberate methodological decisions stand behind the 50 questions. Each dimension is captured through five statements, answered on a five-point agreement scale from “Not at all true” to “Completely true”. Several dimensions contain a reverse-keyed control item, a standard technique of questionnaire construction against automatic click-through: attentive answers produce a consistent profile.
Selected questions additionally offer an “I don't know” option, because for topics such as emotional processing, identity, and sense of time, this very absence of knowing is a meaningful signal that the scoring takes into account. The emotional-processing dimension works with gender-specific question sets, because research describes the clearest differences between female and male experience here; anyone who locates themselves outside these categories chooses the set that comes closer to their inner experience. All content exists equally in German, English, and Spanish.
PairPattern© is a self-reflection and conversation tool. It makes perceptual differences visible, gives couples a shared language, and delivers concrete, everyday strategies in the 64-page Companion Guide. The result constitutes neither a medical nor a psychological diagnosis. For a clinical assessment, specialized physicians, therapists, and counseling services are the right address, and a PairPattern© profile can be a helpful, structured entry point into exactly that professional conversation.
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