“You should smile more”: Population-level sex differences in smiling also exist in autistic people
Year: 2024
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Societal expectations for social-emotional behavior differ across sexes; however, diagnostic definitions of autism do not account for this when delineating “typical” versus “atypical.” This study examines sex differences in autism in one behavior associated with strong gender biases: smiling. Computer vision was used to quantify smiling in 60 autistic (20 female) and 67 neurotypical (25 female) youth during conversations. Effects of sex and diagnosis were examined on degree of smiling, smile prototypicality, changes in smiling, and impact of smiling on interaction quality. Sex differences in smiling persisted across diagnosis groups: females smiled more than males, and their smiles were more prototypical. Autistic youth smiled less, and less prototypically, than neurotypical youth, with no sex by diagnosis interactions. In autism, the association between smile activity and interaction quality approached statistical significance, seemingly driven by autistic males but not females. Findings are consistent with population trends for females to smile more during social exchanges and “display rules” requiring more positive expressivity from females. Autism has historically been defined based on differences between autistic and neurotypical males . Failure to acknowledge sex-based differences in social-emotional behavior may leave some females appearing to have fewer autistic traits, increasing their risk of being under-identified and misunderstood.
Source: Autism
Authors: Casey J Zampella, Julia Parish-Morris, Jessica Foy, Meredith Cola, Robert T Schultz, John D Herrington
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: Eagles Autism Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Awards: G1761434855, G2463005615, Digitizing Human Vocal Interaction to Understand and Diagnose Autism, G5844078568, The Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) at CHOP/Penn, Optimized Affective Computing Measures of Social Processes and Negative Valence in Youth Psychopathology
OpenAlex ID: W4404498915