Skip to main content
Log in

Brief Report: Gender Identity Differences in Autistic Adults: Associations with Perceptual and Socio-cognitive Profiles

  • Brief Report
  • Published:
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Prior research has shown an elevation in autism traits and diagnoses in individuals seen for gender related consultation and in participants self-identifying as transgender. To investigate this relationship between autism and gender identity from a new angle, we compared the self-reported autism traits and sensory differences between participants with autism who did or did not identify with their assigned sex (i.e. cisgender or trans and non-binary, respectively). We found broad elevation of most cognitive autism traits in the trans and non-binary group (those who identified with a gender other than their assigned gender), and lower visual and auditory hypersensitivity. We contrast these data to existing hypotheses and propose a role for autistic resistance to social conditioning.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. Kuyper and Wijsen (2014) used the terms “ambivalent” and “incongruent”. We interpret both of these for inclusion in comparison to our trans participants, and “ambivalent” (defined as equal or greater identification with the sex not assigned at birth than the sex assigned at birth) for inclusion in comparison to our nonbinary participants.

  2. Corbett et al. (2009) argue that the desire for routine may be driven by the anxiety that the unpredictability of social environments can cause. Therefore, it seems likely that this is suppressed relative to overall AQ scores in our sample because those individuals with the highest scores may also be those least likely to ‘come out’ or acknowledge their atypical gender identities.

References

Download references

Funding

This research was funded in part by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant (Grant No. 648082).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

RW analysed and interpreted the data, supervised by LK and SB, assisted by JD. SB oversaw collection of the data. RW lead the writing of the manuscript with critical feedback from LK, JD and SB at every stage.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Reubs J. Walsh.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

Each author declares that s/he has no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research ethics committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Walsh, R.J., Krabbendam, L., Dewinter, J. et al. Brief Report: Gender Identity Differences in Autistic Adults: Associations with Perceptual and Socio-cognitive Profiles. J Autism Dev Disord 48, 4070–4078 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3702-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3702-y

Keywords

Navigation