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

The authors examined infant hearing and vision screening tests for a g roup of children subsequently diagnosed as autistic and compared them with a group of children suffering from non-specific developmental del ay, as well as with a random sample of records. Four categories (motor , vision, hearing and language, social) were investigated at three age s: 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 sh arp increase in reported abnormalities in all categories at 12 months. The autistic group had a selective increase in the social category al one at 18 months.