Background and aimsGender differences in the written language of autistic individuals are an overlooked but important area of research. We contend that the gender differences in spoken language of autistic individuals may extend to written language, mirroring the gender differences of writing in the general population and reflecting the shared dimensionality of oral and written language. Our research question was: Do autistic adolescent females demonstrate written language characteristics, across persuasive, expository, and narrative genres, that are distinct from those of autistic adolescent males and non-autistic (NA) adolescent females?MethodsWe performed a secondary, exploratory analysis on writing samples collected from 18 participants (11 autistic males, three autistic females, and four NA females) from a larger investigation of autistic adolescents’ writing skills. Each participant completed three writing samples—one persuasive, one expository, and one narrative (for a total of 54 writing samples). We compared sample length (total number of words), writing productivity (words written per minute), syntactic length (mean length of T-unit in words), vocabulary diversity (type-token ratio), and macrostructure of autistic females’ samples to autistic males’ and NA females’ samples.ResultsBased on non-parametric analyses using variable medians, autistic males, but not autistic females, wrote significantly shorter expository samples than NA females. Autistic males’ writing productivity was significantly lower in the persuasive and expository genres than both autistic females and NA females. Several other comparisons of sample length, productivity, vocabulary diversity, and persuasive and narrative macrostructure yielded large effect sizes but were not statistically significant.ConclusionsThough our small sample sizes prevent us from drawing generalizable conclusions, we observed that some gender-specific findings of the current study differ from previous findings based on a single autistic group (females and males combined). Combining data of autistic females with autistic males may cloud the distinct written language characteristics of each group.ImplicationsOur findings, especially when situated in the context of relevant literature, suggest that larger-scale investigation of gender differences in written language is essential in order to more fully describe the unique characteristics of autistic females. Clinicians should be prepared to support autistic writers’ needs for producing written language to meet their developmental, academic, social, and employment-related goals.

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检查性别对自闭症书面语言技能的影响：小样本探索性研究

背景和目标自闭症患者书面语言中的性别差异是一个被忽视但重要的研究领域。我们认为，自闭症患者口语中的性别差异可能会延伸到书面语言，反映了一般人群写作中的性别差异，并反映了口头和书面语言的共同维度。我们的研究问题是：自闭症青春期女性是否表现出与自闭症青春期男性和非自闭症 (NA) 青春期女性不同的书面语言特征，包括说服性、说明性和叙事类型？从对自闭症青少年写作技能的更大规模调查中收集了 18 名参与者（11 名自闭症男性、3 名自闭症女性和 4 名 NA 女性）的写作样本。每位参与者完成了 3 个写作样本——1 个说服性样本、1 个说明性样本和 1 个叙述性样本（总共 54 个写作样本）。我们将自闭症女性样本的样本长度（总单词数）、写作效率（每分钟写的单词数）、句法长度（单词中 T 单元的平均长度）、词汇多样性（类型标记比）和宏观结构与结果根据使用可变中位数的非参数分析，自闭症男性（而非自闭症女性）写的说明性样本明显短于 NA 女性。自闭症男性在说服性和说明性体裁方面的写作效率显着低于自闭症女性和 NA 女性。对样本长度、生产力、词汇多样性以及说服性和叙述性宏观结构的其他几项比较产生了很大的效应，但在统计上并不显着。结论虽然我们的小样本使我们无法得出普遍的结论，但我们观察到当前的一些特定性别的发现这项研究与之前基于单一自闭症群体（女性和男性组合）的研究结果有所不同。将自闭症女性和自闭症男性的数据结合起来可能会掩盖每个群体独特的书面语言特征。 意义我们的研究结果，特别是在相关文献的背景下，表明对书面语言中的性别差异进行更大规模的调查是必要的，以便更多地了解书面语言中的性别差异。充分描述了女性自闭症患者的独特特征。临床医生应做好准备，支持自闭症作家对书面语言的需求，以满足他们的发展、学术、社会和就业相关目标。