Merken Florence, Deliens Gaétane, Geelhand Philippine
ACTE at ULB Neurosciences Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
LaDisco, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2025 Jul 31. doi: 10.1007/s10803-025-06972-z.
Narrative research in autism has consistently revealed linguistic differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals. However, existing studies predominantly focus on male samples, overlooking the communicative profiles of autistic women. Recent studies suggest that autistic women exhibit distinct socio-communicative characteristics compared to both autistic men and non-autistic women. Given the important role of written communication in academic and professional settings and the reported preference for written expression among autistic adults, this study investigates the linguistic features of written narratives produced by autistic and non-autistic women.
Fifteen autistic and fifteen non-autistic women each wrote four episodic memories based on emotion cue words (pride, sadness, happiness, anger). These narratives were systematically analyzed across three linguistic dimensions: microstructure (narrative length, lexical variability, use of unique and low-frequency words), macrostructure (use of causal connectives) and internal state language (emotion, cognition, perception, modality and evaluation words).
Autistic women produced significantly longer narratives with higher lexical variability, more unique and low-frequency words than non-autistic women, particularly in narratives involving negative emotions. They also used fewer explicit causal connectives and showed a reduced use of cognition words but included more perception words compared to non-autistic women. No group differences were observed for emotion, modality and evaluation words.
This exploratory study contributes to a better characterization of the linguistic profile of autistic women in a written task. The results suggest a unique writing profile, highlighting strengths in lexical variability and vocabulary, and challenges in the expression of explicit causal relations and internal state language.
关于自闭症的叙事研究一直揭示出自闭症患者与非自闭症患者之间存在语言差异。然而，现有研究主要集中在男性样本上，忽视了自闭症女性的交流特征。最近的研究表明，与自闭症男性和非自闭症女性相比，自闭症女性表现出独特的社会交流特征。鉴于书面交流在学术和职业环境中的重要作用，以及据报道自闭症成年人更喜欢书面表达，本研究调查了自闭症女性和非自闭症女性所写书面叙事的语言特征。
15名自闭症女性和15名非自闭症女性分别根据情感提示词（自豪、悲伤、快乐、愤怒）写出四段情景记忆。这些叙事从三个语言维度进行了系统分析：微观结构（叙事长度、词汇变化、独特和低频词的使用）、宏观结构（因果连接词的使用）和内部状态语言（情感、认知、感知、情态和评价词）。
与非自闭症女性相比，自闭症女性写出的叙事明显更长，词汇变化更大，独特和低频词更多，尤其是在涉及负面情绪的叙事中。与非自闭症女性相比，她们使用的明确因果连接词也更少，认知词的使用减少，但感知词更多。在情感、情态和评价词方面未观察到组间差异。
这项探索性研究有助于更好地刻画自闭症女性在书面任务中的语言特征。结果表明了一种独特的写作特征，突出了词汇变化和词汇方面的优势，以及在明确因果关系和内部状态语言表达方面的挑战。
