Gender Differences in Pragmatic Communication in School-Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Eight-year-old girls with autism tell fuller, more plan-focused stories than boys with the same IQ.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Conlon et al. (2019) asked 8-year-old children with autism to tell a story from a picture book.
They compared girls and boys who had similar IQ scores.
The team counted how many key story parts and planning words each child used.
What they found
Girls packed more important story pieces into their tales.
They also used richer language about plans and intentions.
Boys told simpler stories with fewer goal-setting words.
How this fits with other research
Kauschke et al. (2016) first showed girls with autism use more feeling words than boys. Olivia’s team builds on that by showing girls also weave more planning language into stories.
Ros-Demarize et al. (2020) found toddler girls with autism have weaker social communication than boys, which seems opposite. The gap closes as girls grow; by 8 they turn the weakness into a narrative strength.
Matheis et al. (2019) saw no gender gap in autism symptoms once IQ was matched in toddlers. Olivia’s study shows a gap can appear later in specific skills like storytelling, so age and task matter.
Why it matters
When you assess an 8-year-old girl with autism, do not assume her story skills match the boys you know. Expect richer planning language and more complete plots. This can mask social issues, so probe deeper. Use the same picture-book task to spot each child’s true profile and plan goals that fit.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Possible gender differences in manifestations of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were examined using data on production of narratives. The Expression, Reception and Recall of Narrative Instrument (ERRNI; Bishop, Expression, Reception and Recall of Narrative Instrument, Harcourt assessment, London, 2004) was administered to a sample of matched 8-year-old intellectually able boys and girls with ASD (13M, 13F), who had been selected from a large, longitudinal study. In addition, transcripts of the narratives were analyzed in detail. Significant gender differences were found in narrative production. Girls included more salient story elements than boys. On detailed language analysis, girls were also shown to tell richer stories, including more descriptors of planning or intention. Overall, our findings suggest that subtle differences in social communication may exist between intellectually able boys and girls with ASD. If reliably identifiable in young children, such gender differences may contribute to differential diagnosis of ASD. In addition, such differences may pave the way for differential approaches to intervention when the target is effective communication in sophisticated discourse contexts.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2019 · doi:10.1007/s10803-018-03873-2