Esther Jung
USA
Title: Gender bias in autism: Girls overlooked in the diagnostic criteria
Submitted Date: 2019-07-10
Biography
Esther Jung is a rising high school senior attending from Southern California. Her motivation to support those with special needs, especially autism, has led her to dedicate time outside of school to autism-related activities. As the President of Autism Speaks student organization at her school, she aims to educate high school students and other people in her community about autism
Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, is a neurodevelopmental disorder found in roughly one in 68 children. It is characterized by socio-communicative impairment and repetitive behaviors that interfere with an individual’s ability to function. Although it can be found within any racial and ethnic group, it is much less commonly diagnosed among females than males. Further insight shows that the diagnostic criteria for females across multiple diagnostic tools require more severe autistic symptoms and greater cognitive and behavioral issues. This paper investigates the cause behind the gender gap between males and females diagnosed with autism. Through multiple studies and articles, it was discovered that a specific phenotype exists for most autistic females, the phenotype being the ability to mask symptoms and mimic social behaviors/cues of peers without autism. These traits commonly found in females causes autism to go unnoticed or misdiagnosed leading to detrimental mental health effects on girls and women. This founding called for more attentive observations from researchers, as well as revisions to current diagnostic tools for a clearly defined symptomology of autism in females. The articles used in this paper are from Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Autism, Social Work in Mental Health, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Research in Developmental Disabilities, all of which specialize in publishing works on disorders, especially autism. This research is extremely important to prevent late diagnosis of autism in females. There exists a profound need for advanced research to close the gender gap in this growing field. It is not uncommon to find girls who have been misdiagnosed for depression until they are re-diagnosed for autism at the age of 17. To prevent future generations of females secretly suffering from autism to go undiagnosed, it is pivotal to properly educate and train professionals, such as social workers, medical practitioners, and teachers to identify the appropriate symptoms in girls. Providing updated diagnostic tools is the first step towards the right direction regarding this critical issue
May J Wang
China
Title: The interaction between bilingualism and autism from social, cognitive and perceptual perspectives
Submitted Date: 2019-08-29
Biography
May J Wang as a very fluent bilingual herself, she is an Emerging High School Student based in Beijing, China. She has specific interests on the interaction of language development and autism. Particularly, she has read widely on how multilingualism and autism develop in a psychological perspective. As a future research interest, she is motivated to support those with autism through introducing the potential advantage of learning additional languages. As an active volunteer in her school’s campaigns for mental health education, she has constantly taken action to raise awareness of and provide solutions for adolescent mental health issues within and outside her school
Abstract
The presentation takes a novel psycholinguistic approach looking into autism, focusing on the interaction between bilingualism and autism research. It provides a combination of different dimensions, from social to cognitive and perceptual, to explain this relationship. In light of the complexity and variety of symptoms characterized in individuals with autism, this presentation aims to broadly categories them into three areas - namely social interaction deficits, cognitive deficits, and perceptual irregularities – in order to pinpoint the specific explanations for the abnormalities. In particular, theoretical underpinnings of theory of mind, executive functions, and central coherence will be compared and discussed in a heterogenous fashion. Multilingualism and additional language development have also attracted attention on the three areas mentioned above. Cognitively, multilingualism was argued to bring upon advantages on domain-general cognitive functions ranging from working memory to inhibition and task-switching. Theory of mind and central coherence were also associated to how language switches interact with metacognitive awareness and semantics/pragmatics in linguistics. This presentation therefore, argues that the theoretical overlap in autism and bilingualism on the executive functions domain could be critical in advancing the understanding of both populations in the cognitive perspective. More importantly, this argument posits that the adverse effect from apparent executive dysfunction along with other neurodevelopmental symptoms could potentially be reversed by the acquisition of new languages. Additional language learning could serve as effective practice strategies to compensate for the developmental deficits on social, cognitive and perceptual aspects. The focus of this presentation therefore critically evaluates research that relates the two psychological concepts, aiming to unleash the potential of a rather new area for autism treatment. Further, in light of the lack of research that links the two areas in the academia, this presentation also targets to encourage researchers to explore this multi-beneficial, multidimensional technique to autism intervention
