Children with autism do not show interest and are not proficient in recognizing people’s faces. If they do look at a person’s face, they concentrate only on one part, such as the eyes or the mouth. In a paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Geraldine Dawson showed groups of three-and four-year-old children with autism, mental retardation, or normal children, pictures of their mother and a stranger and pictures of their favorite toy and a strange toy. The brain wave recordings registered to pictures of mom and the favorite toy in the children with mental retardation and the normal children. The brain waves of the children with autism responded to the picture of the favorite toy, but there was no difference in the response to their mom’s face and the face of a stranger.
Excerpted from Little Bubba's Not Ready for Nashville Yet: Case Histories of Children with Autism or Other Neuropsychological Disorders. Available at http://www.ABA4Autism.com
