School of Graduate Psychology, Pacific University, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA.
Department of Psychological Science, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA.
Autism Res. 2024 Nov;17(11):2333-2345. doi: 10.1002/aur.3216. Epub 2024 Aug 22.
Almost all autistic youths have special interests (SIs), which are focused, intense areas of passion and interest in a particular topic. Emerging research suggests that there are gender differences in SIs among autistic youth; however, commonly used measures that assess for the presence of SIs may not fully capture the granular nature of those differences between autistic boys and girls. Characterizing these differences is important for autism identification in girls, as SIs in autistic girls may often be overlooked by caregivers, teachers, and clinicians due to their more "typical" and more socially oriented content areas compared to autistic boys. This study therefore aimed to more fully characterize gender differences in SIs using a newly developed caregiver-report measure of SIs (the Special Interests Survey; SIS). Caregivers of 1921 autistic youth completed the SIS. Analyses revealed many similarities between boys and girls; there were no gender differences in mean age SI onset, caregivers' perceptions of uniqueness or interferences of endorsed SIs, or duration of previous SIs. There were gender differences in endorsement of less than half (39%) of the SI categories measured, and there were minor differences in the number of endorsed current and past SIs. Categories with significant gender differences fell along typical gender lines (e.g., more boys interested in math and construction, more girls interested in animals and arts/crafts). This study extends the growing literature on SIs and gender differences in autism and has important implications for supporting autistic youth and their families.
几乎所有自闭症青少年都有特殊兴趣（SIs），这是对特定主题的专注、强烈的热情和兴趣领域。新出现的研究表明，自闭症青少年的 SIs 存在性别差异；然而，常用于评估 SIs 存在的测量方法可能无法充分捕捉自闭症男孩和女孩之间的差异的细微性质。这些差异的特征对于女孩的自闭症识别很重要，因为与自闭症男孩相比，自闭症女孩的 SIs 可能由于其更“典型”和更面向社会的内容领域而经常被照顾者、教师和临床医生忽视。因此，本研究旨在使用新开发的照顾者报告 SIs 测量工具（特殊兴趣调查；SIS）更全面地描述 SIs 中的性别差异。1921 名自闭症青少年的照顾者完成了 SIS。分析显示男孩和女孩之间有许多相似之处；在 SIs 起始的平均年龄、照顾者对所认可的 SIs 的独特性或干扰的看法、或以前 SIs 的持续时间方面，没有性别差异。在测量的 SIs 类别中，有不到一半（39%）的类别存在性别差异，而认可的当前和过去 SIs 的数量存在较小差异。存在显著性别差异的类别沿着典型的性别线分布（例如，更多男孩对数学和建筑感兴趣，更多女孩对动物和艺术/手工艺感兴趣）。本研究扩展了关于 SIs 和自闭症中性别差异的不断增长的文献，对支持自闭症青少年及其家庭具有重要意义。
