Early symptoms of autistic children and its diagnostic significance.

In order to make a checklist for the early diagnosis of autism, the abnormalities of mental development before the age of two were examined retrospectively in autistic children. Additionally, the correlation between these early symptoms and the prognosis of autistic children were investigated. The subjects were 85 autistic children, 64 mentally retarded children and 150 normal children. The parents of these children were interviewed by child psychiatrists based on original questionnaires. The 27 early symptoms indicating disorders in personal relations, perception and sleeping as well as the setback course were found in autistic children. The onset ages of imitating others, pointing at objects and saying Yes were retarded in the poorly developed group as compared with the highly developed group.