Tunnekuvausten sukupuolierot autismikirjon ja verrokkiryhmän nuorten aikuisten kerronnassa

Previous studies have reported mixed findings about how females and males on the autismspectrum orient to social situations, interpret and tell narratives about them. This studyexamined how females (n = 7) and males (n = 24) on the autism spectrum and control females(n = 11) and males (n = 24) refer to the emotions of characters seen in socio-pragmaticallycomplex videos. We investigated the amount of explicit and implicit references to emotionsin the participants’ narratives and whether their references included contextual information.Results showed that both control females and females on the autism spectrum made moreimplicit references to emotions than males on the autism spectrum. Males, but not females,on the autism spectrum also provided less contextual information than control females andcontrol males. There were no observed differences between control females and control males.These findings encourage paying attention to sex differences in order to better identify femalesand males on the autism spectrum and to provide them with more targeted support.