3:55am July 29, 2014

➸ Women and girls on the autism spectrum - | autism | Asperger syndrome |

A summary of the issues related to identifying autism in women and girls, based on research carried out by Dr Judith Gould and Dr Jacqui Ashton Smith.

I thought I would share this resource, since it was definitely the thing that cemented the idea that I had autism for me. It’s basically a list of ways in which girls can present syptoms differently than boys.

I mean, I saw these and was like:

Girls are more able to follow social actions by delayed imitation because they observe other children and copy them, perhaps masking the symptoms of Asperger syndrome (Attwood, 2007).

Yep, I do that. Badly, but I still do it.

Girls are often more aware of and feel a need to interact socially. They are involved in social play, but are often led by their peers rather than initiating social contact. Girls are more socially inclined and many have one special friend.

Yup. I rarely had more than one good friend at a time at school and I still struggle with being the one to suggest going out and doing things.

In our society, girls are expected to be social in their communication. Girls on the spectrum do not ‘do social chit chat’ or make ‘meaningless’ comments in order to facilitate social communication. The idea of a social hierarchy and how one communicates with people of different status can be problematic and get girls into trouble with teachers.

Not usually trouble so much as realising too late that what I said was probably inappropriate. Like repeating details about my friend’s sex life… So, yeah…

Evidence suggests that girls have better imagination and more pretend play (Knickmeyer et al, 2008). Many have a very rich and elaborate fantasy world with imaginary friends. Girls escape into fiction, and some live in another world with, for example, fairies and witches.

Well, more like Jedi and space monsters, but same difference, right?

The interests of girls in the spectrum are very often similar to those of other girls – animals, horses, classical literature – and therefore are not seen as unusual. It is not the special interests that differentiate them from their peers but it is the quality and intensity of these interests. Many obsessively watch soap operas and have an intense interest in celebrities.

Okay, well, this is a little less cut and dry because I have both female-coded and male-coded interests. I had a notebook filled with alternating dress designs and sketches of comic book characters.

Anyway, enough blabbing from me. Just thought I’d share.