# "Pre-autism" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 19, 2009, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-autism/493668 "2009-04-19T23:56:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-autism/493668/1 "2009-04-19T23:56:00Z")
There is something I don’t understand in this whole autism debate. Has anyone done even a retrospective study of the social interactions of children who turn out to be autistic? Had they appeared entirely normal before the diagnosis? Autism is generally diagnosed at between 18 and 30 months exactly when normal children learn to speak. But social interaction begins long before that. My daughter visited last week with her 10 month old son. He is just so social. Even at six months, I had to hide when he was nursing because he would rather look at me and smile than feed. From my experience with 3 children and 6 grandchildren, this is pretty much what I expect. So my question is were children who later turned out to be autistic this social before a year? A negative answer to this question would surely put a crimp to any association between vaccination and autism. But I have never seen it addressed. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-autism/493668/2 "2009-04-20T00:42:10Z")
Yes the studies have been done and your speculation is correct. There are, albeit subtle, abnormalities in infants who later get diagnosed with autism seen on reviews of videotapes. [Here](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17917803?ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum) is one such study: > [@](#): > > The 36 children with AD and the 27 matched control children were all aged between 3 and 5 years at recruitment. Reported anomalies in gaze and affect emerged in the children with AD as early as the first 6 months of life, generally becoming more severe just prior to the second birthday. Video data confirmed these anomalies from as early as the first year. Joint attention impairments were found throughout the second year of life. And [here.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8050980?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=3&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed) > [@](#): > > Coded home videotapes of 11 autistic and 11 normally developing children’s first year birthday parties for social, affective, joint attention, and communicative behaviors and for specific autistic symptoms. Autistic children displayed significantly fewer social and joint attention behaviors and significantly more autistic symptoms. In combination, four behaviors correctly classified 10 of 11 autistic children and 10 of 11 normal children. These behaviors consisted of pointing, showing objects, looking at others, and orienting to name. And [here.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12364846?ordinalpos=21&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum) > [@](#): > > Fifteen home movies from the first 6 months of life of children who later received a diagnosis of ASD were compared with home movies of 15 normal children. The diagnosis was performed after the third year of life of children by two senior child and adolescent psychiatrists using a checklist of symptoms … The films of the two groups were mixed and rated by blind observers through a Grid for the Assessment of Attentional Skills in Infants, composed of 13 items grouped into three developmental areas. RESULTS: Using multivariate analysis of variance, the authors found significant differences between the two groups for the items in the social attention and the social behavior areas; on the contrary, there were no differences in nonsocial attention. None of these changes are dramatic enough to be diagnostic however. That said we can very often be highly confident that a particular child does _not_ have autism - the highly socially oriented interactive babbling waving 9-12 month old (like your grandson) is highly unlikely to later get an autism diagnosis. No, the anti-vaxxers will not be crimped. Facts don’t matter. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-autism/493668/3 "2009-04-20T00:50:26Z")
[Here’s an article](http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=184) by neurologist Steven Novella of Yale University, talking about those early signs of autism (which can be detected by skilled observers before the children have had the chance to receive vaccines blamed by some for autism).