Infantile autism. I: A prospective study of the diagnosis

Autistic features in young children with significant cognitive impairment: autism or mental retardation?

This review addresses the issues and challenges related to the differential diagnosis of autism in preschool children with significant cognitive impairment. Issues affecting differential diagnosis include the use of traditional diagnostic guidelines for preschoolers with developmental delays, developmental changes in behavioral characteristics, the involvement of cognitive factors in symptom expression, and the overlap between autism and mental retardation in individuals with significant cognitive impairment. The usefulness of autistic features for differential diagnosis is explored in terms of the core deficits of autism.

Relationship between neonatal behavior and subsequent temperament

The validity of the neonatal behavioral assessment scale in predicting later infant temperament is of theoretical and clinical importance. The scale was administered to 47 full-term healthy neonates. Of these, 40 were followed and the infant characteristics questionnaire was given at four months of age. Significant correlations were revealed between the neonatal assessment items from the clusters of orientation and motor maturity and the temperament factors "fussy-difficult" and "unpredictable". Items from the cluster of autonomic stability correlated with the temperament factor "unadaptable." These correlations possibly indicate that perceived temperament does reflect intrinsic infant qualities.

Psychiatric disorders in children with earlier infantile spasms

In order to evaluate the occurrence of psychiatric disorder following infantile spasms, a long-term follow-up study (between three and 19 years) was made of 192 children in Finland. Psychiatric disorders were found in 53 of the children. 24 had infantile autism (transient in 14 cases), 16 of whom were also hyperkinetic, as were an additional 29 cases from the whole group. Considerable muscular hypotonia was frequently combined with infantile autism, but both tended to decrease with age. Autistic children often had psychomotor epilepsy and temporal lobe abnormalities, which suggests that organic lesions with a specific localization may be a pathophysiological basis for autism. In addition, the hyperkinetic children had more focal temporal abnormalities in their EEGs than did the children without psychiatric disorders.