A five-year old boy has an obsession with vacuum cleaners while his five-year old female playmate has an obsession with monkeys. Which kid gets spotted for Autism Spectrum Disorder testing?
According to some concerned ASD researchers, the girl might well be just as likely to have Asperger's Syndrome--a disorder at the mild end of the spectrum--as the boy, but her more socially typical interests mask it long enough for her to go undiagnosed into her teens or even adulthood.
Some researchers claim that girls have different symptoms entirely from boys--showing a higher interest in social interaction, for example, and more of a tendency to look to girls around them for clues about how to dress or act. Boys, these researchers say, are more aggressive and less inclined to work at showing (if not actually feeling) empathy.
Others, like Ami Klin, director of Yale's autism research group look at this mostly anecdotal data with skepticism, cautioning,
"It's a possibility, but I don't know anyone who has tested it and I can think of many exceptions to any rule you come up with about what narrow interests or other traits each gender has."
More plausible to many is the probability that behaviors that look abnormal in boys more closely follow social expectations for girls, masking girls' disorder for much longer. When a preschool or even older girl plays alone with one toy for hours at a time, she might be seen as shy or even well-behaved by comparison to a boy doing the same, since boys are often expected and encouraged to be more active or aggressive than girls.
Whatever the cause of missed diagnoses, it is perfectly clear that girls are suffering from the problem, as we come to realize that early intervention is key for helping children with spectrum disorders. As attention to the ASD gender gap increases, that very gap may narrow. Right now, boys are thought to outnumber girls with spectrum disorders 10-1. That statistic may prove to be more about recognition than actual fact.
