THE RESPONSES OF AUTISTIC-CHILDREN TO THE DISTRESS OF OTHERS

The behavior of preschool children from five groups (developmental lan guage disordered, high-functioning autistic, low-functioning autistic, mentally retarded, and normally developing) were coded in three situa tions: presentation of a nonsocial orienting stimulus (an unfamiliar n oise) and two social situations involving simulated distress on the pa rt of an adult with whom they were playing. Cognitive level was correl ated with level of responsiveness to stimuli only for the two retarded groups (mentally retarded and low-functioning autistic). Girls showed more prosocial behavior than boys in both social situations, independ ent of diagnosis. The language-disordered children showed only mild an d subtle social deficits. The low-functioning autistic children showed pronounced deficits in responding in all situations. The mentally ret arded and high-functioning autistic children showed good awareness of all situations, but were moderately impaired in their ability to respo nd prosocially; they rarely initiated prosocial behavior, but did resp ond to specific prompts. The behavioral feature that marked both autis tic groups, in contrast to all other groups, was a lack of social refe rencing; they did not tend to look toward an adult in the presence of an ambiguous and unfamiliar stimulus. Results are discussed in terms o f variability between and among high- and low-functioning autistic chi ldren, and implications for the core deficits in autism.