Hearing-impaired autistic children.

The charts of 46 children diagnosed as deaf and autistic were reviewed. Nearly one-fifth had normal or near-normal non-verbal intelligence and only one-fifth had severe mental deficiency. The severity of the autistic behavior was related to the severity of the mental deficiency, but not to that of the hearing loss. In 11 of the 46 children, autism went unrecognized for over four years after the diagnosis of hearing loss, and in 10 the hearing loss went unrecognized for several years after the diagnosis of autism. The educational experience of some children was generally disastrous because of the frequently late and incorrect diagnoses and the lack of specialized facilities for hearing-impaired autistic children.