Brief report: Recognition of autism spectrum disorder before one year of age: a retrospective study based on home videotapes.

year of age and allowed for some regularity in the taping situation. Differences between 11 typically developing infants and 11 infants with autism spectrum disorder were found in three general areas: social, joint attention, and autistic-like symptoms. The specific behaviors of looking at the face of another person, showing , pointing, and failing to orient to name correctly classified 91% of the participants according to diagnostic group (10/11 with autism spectrum disorder and 10/11 with typical development). More recently, Baranek (1999) viewed 9–12 month home videotapes of children with autism, mental retardation, and typical development. Infants with autism were found to have poor visual attention, require more prompts to respond to their name, excessively mouth objects, and more frequently show aversion to social touch. The current study aimed to characterize infants with autism spectrum disorder less than 1 year of age. To this end, the current study extended downward the study conducted by Osterling and Dawson (1994) by examing earlier videotapes taken from the same samples studied in the Osterling and Dawson study as well as the videotapes of 8 infants (4 with autistic spectrum disorder, 4 with typical development) who did not participate in the Osterling and Dawson study who were added in order to enlarge the samples. Although little is known about the symptoms of autism in early infancy, research has been able to reliably identify a cluster of behavioral impairments that characterize preschool children with autism. This cluster includes impairments in paying attention to others (eye contact, orienting), imitating the actions of others, affective responsivity, and joint attention behaviors (e.