Speaking the Same Language? A Preliminary Investigation, Comparing the Language and Communication Skills of Females and Males with High-Functioning Autism.
Alexandra Sturrock, Natalie Yau, Jenny Freed and 1 others
PMID 30830491WHAT IT FOUND
Girls with high-functioning autism performed better than boys on some complex language tasks, but below typically developing girls on figurative language and inference.
Simple vocabulary and sentence tasks did not separate the groups.
Key findings
01Females scored higher than males on figurative language meaning, figurative language intent, local coherence inference and category word generation, while TD groups scored higher than HFASD groups on those tasks.
02On basic vocabulary and sentence recall, gender differences were not significant, and diagnosis differences did not remain after controlling for performance IQ.
03Narrative language complexity and causal marker use were lower in HFASD than TD even after controlling for performance IQ, but there was no gender difference.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample was small, with 26 children in each diagnostic group, and the post-hoc power analysis showed low power for several comparisons. The HFASD and TD groups differed on performance IQ, so some basic language differences may reflect IQ rather than diagnosis. The receptive grammar test reached ceiling, so it could not show differences. Several tasks were experimental or novel and not validated on broader samples. The participants were already diagnosed, so the study may not represent girls whose autism is missed. Co-occurring ADHD and anxiety were allowed and could affect test performance. Isolated pragmatic tasks may not reflect real social communication.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that girls with high-functioning autism do not need assessment because they outperformed boys. The sample was small, several non-significant results had low power, and the girls still showed difficulties compared with typically developing girls on several tasks.