The autistic child's recognition of age- and sex-related characteristics of people.

Matched autistic, normal, and nonautistic retarded children were tested for their ability to choose schematic and photographed faces of a man, a woman, a girl, and a boy, to accompany videotaped sequences depicting a person of each class in (a) gestures, (b) vocalizations, and (c) "contexts" that might be considered typical for an individual of this age and sex. Although both autistic and control subjects were able to choose drawings of nonpersonal objects to correspond with videotaped cues, the autistic children were markedly impaired in selecting appropriate faces for the videotaped individuals. It is suggested that these results may reflect autistic children's relative disability in differentiating adults from children and males from females.