Social Development, Friendship, Language, and Sex Differences in Autism

Social Development, Friendship, Language, and Sex Differences in Autism

Friday, September 19, 2025

Registration 8:30am Program 9am to 12pm

Presented By: Julia Parish-Morris, Ph.D.

Location: Online Workshop

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

3 CE Credits

Act 48 Available

In this session, participants will learn about social development in autism, including friendship and language, and commonly observed sex differences in these domains. They will learn how verbally fluent autistic individuals may face challenges to achieving their short- and long-term social goals. Finally, participants will learn about many important ways to support social development in autistic people from birth through adulthood.

Objectives:

1. Compare similarities and differences in the early social development of autistic girls and boys
2. List commonly observed differences between autistic girls and boys in the domain of language
3. Describe commonly observed differences between autistic girls and boys in the domain of friendship
4. Cite multiple reasons why autistic girls tend to be diagnosed later, missed, or misdiagnosed, compared to autistic boys
5. Describe ways to support autistic girls and boys in specific social contexts and with consideration for individualized social goals.

Julia Parish-Morris is an Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, and a Principal Scientist at the Center for Autism Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. As the Director of the Social Attention and Language Lab, Dr. Parish-Morris discovers clinical language and social attention phenotypes across the lifespan in individuals with neurodevelopmental or psychiatric differences. Specifically, she uses computational approaches – including NLP and machine learning – to quantify real-world social communication, with a focus on understudied subgroups like autistic girls. Dr. Parish-Morris graduated magna cum laude from Smith College and earned her PhD in Developmental Psychology at Temple University, with postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is the recipient of multiple prestigious fellowships and awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Autism Science Foundation, and the American Psychological Association, and has been invited to speak nationally and internationally. Her work has been published in highly regarded scientific journals including Lancet Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, Molecular Autism, Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry and the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

PSCP: The Psychology Network is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. PSCP: The Psychology network maintains responsibility for this program and its content.