Girls with social deficits and learning problems: Autism, atypical Asperger syndrome or a variant of these conditions.

Six girls aged 6-10 years meeting criteria for autistic disorder are presented. They were all high-functioning in that they had IQs in the 60-100 range and spoke in complicated sentences. Their clinical picture had not led a variety of specialists to consider an autism diagnosis before age 6 years in spite of the fact that they had shown mild motor delays, uncharacteristic developmental deviance and social, communicative and imaginative deficits already before age 2 years in all cases. It is suggested that the autism phenotype might be different in girls as compared with boys. It is further speculated that if female cases such as those described - and others given a whole host of different diagnostic labels - were only considered for an autism diagnosis, the high male:female ratio traditionally encountered in autism might drop considerably.