CAN AUTISM BE PREDICTED ON THE BASIS OF INFANT SCREENING TESTS?

Abstract

The authors examined infant hearing and vision screening tests for a group of children subsequently diagnosed as autistic and compared them with a group of children suffering from non-specific developmental delay, as well as with a random sample of records. Four categories (motor, vision, hearing and language, social) were investigated at three ages: six, 12 and 18 months. The random sample group had a low incidence of reported problems at all ages. The learning-disabled group had a sharp increase in reported abnormalities in all categories at 12 months. The autistic group had a selective increase in the social category alone at 18 months.