Autism

Autism is an organic condition that affects development very early in life. Autistic children have social/emotional difficulties with the use of non-verbal behaviours, such as eye-to-face gaze, and the communicative use of gestures, facial expressions and body posture. Demonstrating joint attention and empathy seems to be a challenge as they are likely to prefer isolated activities.

The ways in which social and communicative problems are manifested vary widely among autistic children. However, the presence of early social orienting impairment, which is demonstrated prior to 24 months of age, has led researchers to conclude that it is the primary impairment in autism.

Diagnosis of autism is difficult prior to 30 months of age because of the instability of diagnoses before that age period. A key indicator is impaired social processing of faces, emotions and mentalizing skills, and difficulties acquiring communication skills. But because there is no biological marker or medical test for the condition, and early indicators of social behaviour are harder to measure and analyze than developments in language or motor skills, diagnosis of young children can be hard to achieve. Instead, autism diagnosis relies on parental report information and on behavioural observation.