Does gender influence core deficits in ASD? An investigation into social-communication and play of girls and boys with ASD.
Toddlers with ASD show the same social-communication and play deficits regardless of gender—use equal cut-offs and look elsewhere (RRBs, camouflaging) for sex-specific patterns.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Clare’s team watched the toddlers with ASD play and talk. Half were girls, half boys.
They scored each child on social-communication and play skills during free-play and snack time.
All kids were matched for age and language level so the groups started even.
What they found
Girls and boys looked almost the same on every skill.
The only blip: among girls, better play linked with better requesting, but the link was weaker in boys.
In plain words, gender did not make autism look “milder” or “different” at this age.
How this fits with other research
Kauschke et al. (2016) later found girls used more feeling words in stories than boys with ASD. Together the papers show gender may show up in subtle language style, not in basic social scores.
Antezana et al. (2019) flipped the coin and looked at repetitive behaviors: girls showed more compulsive and self-injury patterns while boys showed more stereotypy. So gender differences sit in RRBs, not in core social play.
Jorgenson et al. (2020) helps explain why preschool girls looked similar: autistic girls already camouflage more, masking small gaps that tests like Clare’s were built to catch.
Why it matters
When you assess a toddler for ASD, score girls and boys on the same cut-offs. Do not wait for “milder” social signs in girls. If you need a requesting probe, know that a girl’s play skill may predict it better than a boy’s. Pair your social-communication test with an RRB measure, because that is where girl-boy contrasts actually pop up.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Due to the predominance of boys diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), girls are rarely studied independently. Research specifically focusing on play and social-communication in girls with ASD is extremely varied. We were interested in whether girls with ASD demonstrated equivalent social-communication and play skills in early childhood relative to boys, using two measures focused on the specific quantification of these variables. We also examined whether the associations between developmental variables and social-communication and play differed by gender. Forty girls with ASD were individually matched to 40 boys based on ASD severity. Our results suggest that girls and boys were more similar than different, however they also raise questions about the potential differential associations between development and requesting ability in girls and boys with ASD.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2015 · doi:10.1007/s10803-014-2234-3