Increasing attention is being paid to the higher prevalence of boys with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and to the implications of this ratio discrepancy on our understanding of autism in girls. One recent avenue of research has focused on caregiver’s concern, suggesting that autism might present differently in boys and girls. One unexplored factor related to concerns on child development is whether socio-cultural factors such as gender-related expectations influence the evaluation of symptom severity and predictions about future behavioral development. The latter concerns were the focus of the present study and were explored by investigating laypeople’s judgment of the severity of autism symptoms using an online parent role-playing paradigm, in which participants were asked to rate vignettes depicting the behaviors of a child in different everyday life scenarios. The child’s gender and the severity of ASD symptoms were manipulated to examine the effect of gender on the perception of symptom severity. Results suggest that there are no gender differences in perceived symptom severity and associated degree of concern for 5-year-old boys and girls but that there is a gender difference in perceived future atypicality at 15 years old, with boys being rated as more likely to be perceived as atypical by their peers at that age than girls. Investigating parent’s cognition about their child’s future behavioral development can provide additional information regarding delayed diagnosis of autistic girls.

中文翻译：

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性别在自闭症症状严重程度和未来行为发展认知中的作用

人们越来越关注患有自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 的男孩的患病率较高，以及这种比例差异对我们对女孩自闭症的理解的影响。最近的一项研究集中在照顾者的担忧上，表明自闭症在男孩和女孩中的表现可能有所不同。与儿童发展问题相关的一个尚未探索的因素是社会文化因素（例如性别相关期望）是否会影响症状严重程度的评估和对未来行为发展的预测。后一个问题是本研究的重点，并通过使用在线家长角色扮演范式调查外行人对自闭症症状严重程度的判断进行了探讨，其中要求参与者对描述儿童在不同日常生活中的行为的小插曲进行评分场景。操纵孩子的性别和 ASD 症状的严重程度来检查性别对症状严重程度感知的影响。结果表明，5 岁男孩和女孩在感知到的症状严重程度和相关关注程度方面没有性别差异，但在 15 岁时感知到的未来非典型性存在性别差异，男孩被认为更有可能出现这种情况。被同龄人认为比女孩不典型。调查父母对孩子未来行为发展的认知可以提供有关自闭症女孩延迟诊断的更多信息。