Åkerlund Sofia, Håkansson Anders, Claesdotter-Knutsson Emma
Department of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 13;13:1068001. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1068001. eCollection 2022.
The underlying factors of the male predominance in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are largely unknown, although a female advantage in social communication has been pointed out as a potential factor. Recently, attention has been given to ASD as a sensory processing disorder, focusing on the audio-visual temporal processing paramount for the development of communication. In ASD, a deviant audio-visual processing has been noted, resulting in difficulties interpreting multisensory information. Typically Developed (TD) females have shown an enhanced language processing in unisensory situations compared to multisensory situations. We aim to find out whether such an advantage also can be seen in girls within the ASD population, and if so, is it related to social communication skills?
Forty children (IQ > 85), 20 females (mean age = 13.90 years, SD = 2.34) and 20 males (mean age = 12.15 years, SD = 2.83) triaged for an ASD assessment were recruited from a child and youth psychiatric clinic in Sweden. Using The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) we looked at associations with child performance on the Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA-2).
An auditory advantage in the female group was associated with less rated problems in social communications in unisensory processing whereas in multisensory processing an auditory dominance was associated with more rated problems in Social Awareness. In the male group, a visual dominance was associated with more rated problems in Social Rigidity.
A female unisensory processing advantage in ASD could very well be explaining the male domination in ASD. However, the social difficulties related to multisensory processing indicate that ASD females might be struggling as hard as males in more complex settings. Implications on the assessment procedure are discussed.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中男性占主导地位的潜在因素很大程度上尚不清楚，尽管女性在社交沟通方面的优势已被指出是一个潜在因素。最近，ASD作为一种感觉加工障碍受到关注，重点是对沟通发展至关重要的视听时间加工。在ASD中，已注意到视听加工异常，导致在解释多感官信息方面存在困难。与多感官情境相比，发育正常（TD）的女性在单感官情境中表现出更强的语言加工能力。我们旨在了解在ASD人群中的女孩是否也能看到这种优势，如果是，它是否与社交沟通技能有关？
从瑞典一家儿童和青少年精神病诊所招募了40名接受ASD评估的儿童（智商>85），其中20名女性（平均年龄=13.90岁，标准差=2.34）和20名男性（平均年龄=12.15岁，标准差=2.83）。使用社会反应量表（SRS），我们研究了与儿童在综合视觉和听觉持续操作测试（IVA-2）中的表现之间的关联。
女性组中的听觉优势与单感官加工中社交沟通方面评分较低的问题相关，而在多感官加工中，听觉优势与社交意识方面评分较高的问题相关。在男性组中，视觉优势与社交刻板方面评分较高的问题相关。
ASD中女性的单感官加工优势很可能解释了ASD中男性占主导的现象。然而，与多感官加工相关的社交困难表明，在更复杂的环境中，ASD女性可能和男性一样挣扎。讨论了对评估程序的影响。
