Voice pitch and gender in autism.

Abstract

Lay abstract: It is has often been observed that autistic individuals have higher-pitched voices than non-autistic ones, but no clear explanation for this difference has been put forth. However, autistic males are still dramatically over-represented in published research, including the acoustic studies that report higher pitch in autistic participants. In this study, we collected speech samples from a group of autistic and neurotypical adults that, unlike in most studies, was perfectly balanced between groups and genders. In this gender-balanced sample, pitch was significantly higher in autistic versus neurotypical men, but lower in autistic versus neurotypical women. Overall, women tend to have higher-pitched voices than men, but the magnitude of this difference is culture dependent and may be significantly influenced by the internalisation of normative expectations towards one's gender. We propose that higher pitch in autistic males and lower pitch in autistic females could be due, at least in part, to a lesser integration of sociolinguistic markers of gender. Our report shows that speech atypicality should not be operationalised in terms of systematic and unidirectional deviation from the neurotypical baseline.