Why autism goes unrecognised in girls
When it comes to Autism Spectrum Disorder, more boys are diagnosed with autism than girls, with the ratio estimated to be 4:1. One reason for this disparity is that women and girls fail to be diagnosed correctly as they have greater social skills and can mimic social behaviour better than the male counterparts. This means that their autism goes unrecognised.
Information about girls with autism is scarce as a result and most information about autism is based on research on boys and men. This poses a problem because autism may manifest differently in girls and, with a lack of knowledge, it’s difficult to pick it up early.
To change all of this, scientists from the Autism Centre and INTER-PSY (Groningen), Netherlands, examined how autism manifests in girls.
They analysed the behaviour of 68 boys and girls, both with and without autism. As part of the test, the researcher pretended to get her finger caught in a ring binder of a file and exclaimed, “Ow, that hurt”, while shaking her hand. The reaction of the children to this was assessed by two other researchers who looked at the video afterwards to understand how empathically the participants behaved.
Girls have a big advantage because they have a good understanding of social skills and are capable of mimicking them easily, but it does not mean that they have a strong capacity for empathy or skills to be able to form good friendships and relations.
The researchers found that girls, with or without autism, reacted with more empathy than the boys. The scientists found no difference between the participants who had autism and those who didn’t — but they did find a difference in the behaviours between boys and girls. The girls responded to the emotion of the person with questions such as, “Are you OK?” The boys looked for solution to problems, such as, “If you do it like this, you won’t trap your finger.”
The researchers emphasised that both boys and girls with autism had no difficulty in empathising with the emotions of another person. But both boys and girls with autism lack the ability to understand why the person feels as they do. And this becomes difficult in certain situations, for example when young autism sufferers need to react with empathy such as in love problems or situation of conflict with parents and peers.
While girls with autism have a big advantage because they have a good understanding of social skills and are capable of mimicking them easily, it does not mean that they have a strong capacity for empathy or skills to be able to form good friendships and relations.
Caregivers must not be misled by how girls with autism behave socially; rather, they should look for what their specific needs are to formulate a treatment plan different to that which is used to treat boys with autism.
Source: Autism
