Girls and boys on autism spectrum tell stories differently

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Boys are four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet a growing body of research shows that the condition is more common in girls than previously thought, strongly suggesting that new methods are required to diagnose the disorder at younger ages.

A new study from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) examined differences in the way girls and boys on the autism spectrum used certain types of words during storytelling. This study found that autistic girls used significantly more "cognitive process" words such as "think" and "know" than autistic boys, despite comparable autism symptom severity. The results were recently published in the journal Molecular Autism.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 145523.htm

Yep. Verbal girls often show different symptoms.

By the way, the name of the journal sounds like a random pair of popular buzzwords.

Interesting, and as magz says, not entirely surprising. I was reading another piece of linguistics research the other day which found some notable gender difference in another verbal behaviour - disfluency, particularly filled pauses (i.e. "um", "err", etc.) - though less noticably in other areas that they looked at. You can read the full PDF here - it's mostly more concerned with ASD/non-ASD differences (while acknowledging the variance in autism presentation), but see 'Disfluency' in section 3.2.

I imagine that this is very closely related to masking behaviour - the social tactics one uses to get by in society will naturally effect the way that one uses language, as may any gender stereotypes to that one is expected to work out a way of conforming to.

This is absolutely fascinating to me. I'm in the film industry, so I'm around storytelling all the time. I've tried to come up with my own stories, but they are always so muddled. They wander aimlessly, and while I can make a good start and a KICKASS ending, the middle is convoluted. I'm just learning about autism and its properties, and I wonder how much autism hampers my ability to tell stories.

I'm a woman, so according to this study, I am less hampered than my male counterparts. I am very interested in how autistic folks view storytelling and narrative in general. For me, it is an integral part of my being. My special interests, my job, even the way I think is connected to narrative. It's a way of structuring the world and my life, and one that gives meaning to what is otherwise meaningless. It's probably more of a nature thing than a nuture, so I doubt that many will share my opinions...

Cool article, is there anywhere on WP to share interesting autism science, if not I might start a thread here on GAD.

The idea that girls speak differently from boys isn't a revelation. It's consistently observed, regardless of autism.

^ Yes, that's a shortcoming I noticed in the article that I linked to previously - for some reason they separate the genders for the autistic cohort, but not the others, so it's impossible to tell whether the disparity is any wider than would be expected for the general population.

as a young person i was not articulate at all, i could not tell a story to save my life.

I don't see it necessarily as relevant in a way, because in my experiences autism tends to be more disabling for males. Heck, I believe males in general society tend to be more "disabled" in some ways relative to the female population.

Would you mind posting the name of that article, Trogluddite? The link doesn't work for me.

Most things I have read about girls/women on the spectrum and their ability to avoid detection makes me think that I am either a women trapped in a mans body or have a female subtype of autism.

Aah, you're right; it must have just been a temporary link. Luckily, I remember where I found the link; this article on the Language Log blog, which often has pieces which are pertinent to autistic language difference (the writer, Mark Liberman, writes there often and is also one of the paper's co-authors.)

Here's an alternative link that I managed to find, and a more searchable description in case the link goes dead again...
NAACL, Exploring Autism Disorders Using HLT, Mark Liberman et al., June 2016


Yes, I have felt the same, and often identify with the female posters here more than my own gender. I can understand why people speak of "female autism" and "male autism", as the strategies people use to cope do genuinely seem skewed by gender, but I do think that this is too much of a generalisation. A lot of the men I meet who were late-diagnosed seem to also fit the "masking" pattern of coping, as do I, and I do worry that they are as likely to be dismissed by services as is so common for females. I think we need to be careful not to turn the "masking" strategy into a gender stereotype, for the sake both of men who present that way and the women who don't.

^ I think as Gen X we had different struggles to todays spectrumites , society has changed and I don't think diagnosticians are going to have a problem outside Gen X. There is only a finite supply of undiagnosed Gen X spectrumites and they are a dying breed , they will soon be a footnote in autism history so don't worry too much

I think undiagnosed adult rates will fall ( in men ) in the future but there are always people who break the mould of autism.

But it's one of the few things I have any talent for; how would I fill my days otherwise?!

(@firemonkey: If you think I'm leading things too far off-topic, don't be afraid to say!)

Yeah I'm pretty darn special when it comes to worry , I didn't sleep a wink the other night because it was bin day and there were howling winds , I had to retrieve my bags from down the street several times through the night , I just stayed up all night on rubbish watch duty - wtf is wrong with me

You're fine. Nothing wrong with broadening things out a little. On a side note- for anyone wanting full articles of things
https://sci-hub.tw/