Webinar: A Summary of The Female Autism Conundrum

Part Two by Dr. Will Mandy

We need to understand the female Autistic phenotype

Current ASC assessment processes are biased against females

A disproportionate amount of girl are underdiagnosed and/or misdiagnosed and incorrectly excluded from research studies

The current DSM5 on page 57 now states ”girls without intellectual impairment or language delay may go unrecognized, perhaps because of subtler manifestation of social and communication difficulties”

The key task is to develop a better understanding of the autistic female phenotype founded on empirical and scientific investigation. So, what does current research, clinical experience, anecdotes, a network of collaborations with professionals and narratives by females with Autism themselves say?

The Autism Female Phenotype and distinctive tendencies, patterns and trends (some males have traits of the female type and vice versa).

1. Females with ASC are more socially motivated than males with ASC, more typical and gender stereotyped interests (Hiller et. al, 2014). Females show greater interest in people and initiate friendships more.
2. Female obsessions or focused interests include: fashion, people (peers or celebrities or professionals), Barbies, hair, animals, Manga and Anime
3. More vulnerable to internalizing disorders and are prone to Eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa, anxiety, depression and less likely to have conduct issues outside the home (Mandy et. al, 2012, Mandy & Tchanturia, in press)
4. Social difficulties are misattributed to shyness or social anxiety
5. Greater ability and capacity to “camouflage” and/or hide their autistic tendencies (Lai et. al, 2011)
6. Gender differences play out or appear across the lifespan, in a developmental context. The greatest risk in gender differences across the lifespan is the issue of females; the greater female risk of missed diagnosis in the young, in pre-schoolers, in adolescence and into adulthood.
7. Friendships: Girls are often ignored by others rather than rejected
8. Female autistic difficulties are underestimated in school
9. A much greater risk for anxiety and depression in primary school and then eating disorders in adolescence and sexual exploitation
10. Camouflage:  the “masking” of ASC behaviours in social situations and/or the performance of behaviours to compensate for difficulties associated with ASC
11. Masking: Can be conscious (deciding to suppress stimming behaviours in public as they attract negative attention (Mandy & Tchanturia, 2015) or automatic (“doing social mimicry against whomever I’m with. I guess it’s like a cloaking device…I had no idea I was doing it until I as diagnosed”) (Bargiela & Mandy, in press)
12. Acquisition of new skills and capacities to compensate for autistic difficulties and can be conscious (copying popular peers, dress, gestures, talk and practice it over and over at home; Mandy & Tchanturia, 2015) and unconscious (implicit learning from social experience; “it used to take me weeks to figure out what I had done wrong, but now I know pretty much immediately” HM, 15 years old)

What processes underpin camouflage? What drives the capacity to drive and adapt?

1. Social Motivation
2. Socially focused special interests; for example, psychology, anthropology, Jane Austen novels to crack the “social code”, to develop strategies to function socially
3. Socialization experiences and pressures; the social pressures and expectations placed on women as opposed to men
4. Executive control: the ability to inhibit, shift and generate plans
5. Better social imitation and awareness
6. Better Capacity for reflection
7. Higher intelligence quotient and using intelligence to camouflage

So is Camouflaging a friend or foe? Both

The Pros include: allow people to function better in the workplace, in the social context, can open up a social world of friendships and can be a form of personal development/self-help

The Cons include: Exhaustion, loss of identity or identity confusion, underestimation of needs, missed and mis-diagnosis

At what age does female compensation start?

It begins in early childhood and breaking down in early adolescence, with adolescent talk and chit-chat being very exhausting, boring or uninteresting. Young girls have to learn from a very young age that you have to be nice, sweet, hug your relatives, act normal, develop a face you can put on and often acting convincingly so, which then makes it so much harder to get a diagnosis, leading to the theory that girls don’t get Autism or get is much less than boys.

Q & A Session with David Skuse and Will Mandy continues here