Abstract
Females with autism have unique socialization profiles, but less is known about sex/gender differences in the context of socialization interventions. This study utilized a combination of behavioral and survey measures to examine sex/gender differences in 32 autistic adolescents (10 females, 22 males) before and after participation in the 20-week START socialization program. At intake, males self-reported superior social skills use while parents endorsed that females demonstrated superior social competencies. While males and females both experienced socialization improvements post-trial, females experienced greater increases in self-reported social competency and the proportion of questions they asked during peer conversations. These preliminary findings on differential intervention response may help inform future social skill intervention efforts for the needs of females on the spectrum.
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Notes
This paper uses “sex/gender” to be in line with Lai et al. (2015), which notes that while “sex” refers to characteristics that are biologically-determined and “gender” refers to characteristics that are socially-constructed, it is difficult to separate the effects of sex and gender due to the unavoidable overlap between them, especially during the child and adolescent developmental periods. Existing literature on this topic has also used these terms without distinction (some examples are Halladay et al., 2015; Head et al., 2014; Kirkovski et al., 2013).
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank our incredibly hardworking team of research assistants, including peer facilitators and video coders. This work would also not be possible without the participation and dedication of our adolescent participants and their families. The data was collected as part of a randomized clinical trial (RCT) of the START Program, which was funded by the Organization for Autism Research’s Applied Research Grant Competition (PI: Ty Vernon).
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This study was funded by the Organization for Autism Research’s Applied Research Grant Competition (PI: Ty Vernon).
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JAK served as a grant project coordinator, was involved in training and supervising clinicians and research assistants, and oversaw data collection, organization, and analysis efforts. RKS, MJM, and KMPB significantly assisted with data analysis and interpretation for the current study. TWV served as principal investigator and was involved in the conceptualization and development of the START intervention model. All authors made substantial contributions to the manuscript drafting and revision process.
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Ko, J.A., Schuck, R.K., Jimenez-Muñoz, M. et al. Brief Report: Sex/Gender Differences in Adolescents with Autism: Socialization Profiles and Response to Social Skills Intervention. J Autism Dev Disord 52, 2812–2818 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05127-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05127-0