How Do You Recognize Signs Of Autism?
“Hi, I’m Dr. David Hill. And today we’re going to be talking about, how to recognize signs of autism. It used to be that we only recognized autism in children who were relatively severely affected and relatively advanced, between 18 and 24 months of age, sometimes as late as age 3. But as we learn more about autism spectrum disorders we’re learning to identify the signs and symptoms much earlier. The first thing we look for is something called, joint attention or JA for short. That means a child is looking to a parent, usually a mother, for signs as to how to respond to something novel, or where to look. For example, when I walk into an infant’s room, especially starting around 9 months, I watch to see if that infant looks at me, then looks at his mother, and then looks back at me. That means the infant is checking mom’s face for queues, and that suggest that the infant understands that mom’s face is an important place to get social queues about the world around him. An autistic child
