Dutch survey finds autism language preferences vary widely

The news coverage supplied here is about empathy measures in autism. It describes a researcher’s concerns that some questionnaires may confuse uncertainty about another person’s feelings, or a person’s outward response, with a lack of empathy.

However, the primary journal abstract provided alongside that coverage does not report an empathy study. It reports a 2022 online survey about terminology preferences: whether people prefer wording such as “autistic person” or “person with autism.” That mismatch matters because the survey cannot answer the empathy questions raised in the news coverage.

The survey included 1,026 Dutch adults with autism, ages 16 to 84. Fifty-seven percent were women. It also included 286 parents of autistic children. Participants selected the term for autistic people that they liked best.

Most adults with autism in the survey, 68.3%, preferred person-first language. Among parents, 82.5% preferred person-first language. Person-first language puts the person before autism, as in “person with autism.” Identity-first language puts autism first, as in “autistic person.”

The researchers also found that, among the autistic adults surveyed, younger age, higher IQ and more autistic traits were linked with a relatively stronger preference for identity-first language. These were associations within this survey. They do not show that any of those factors causes a language preference.

The findings differ from earlier research in English-speaking countries, which the authors say found an overall preference for identity-first language among autistic adults. The authors suggest that language and culture may affect the words people prefer.

This was an online survey of Dutch participants, so it cannot establish what all autistic people, parents, countries or language communities prefer. It also asked people to select a preferred term, which may not capture every context in which someone’s language preference changes.

The authors’ practical conclusion is not that one phrase is universally right. They recommend that academic papers use a mix of person-first and identity-first language to cover the full range of preferences. For everyday conversations, the study supports a simple idea: people’s preferred language is not uniform, and listening to how an individual refers to themselves can matter.