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Children with autism have atypical gaze behavior but it is unknown whether gaze differs during distinct types of reciprocal interactions. Typically developing children (N = 20) and children with autism (N = 20) (4-13 years) made similar amounts of eye contact with an examiner during a conversation. Surprisingly, there was minimal eye contact during interactive play in both groups. Gaze behavior was stable across 8 weeks in children with autism (N = 15). Lastly, gaze behavior during conversation but not play was associated with autism social affect severity scores (ADOS CSS SA) and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2). Together findings suggests that eye contact in typical and atypical development is influenced by subtle changes in context, which has implications for optimizing assessments of social communication skills.

Two cases of congenital cytomegalovirus infection associated with autism are reported. The viral hypothesis of autism is discussed along with a brief review of the literature. Suggestions are made for future research.

The etiology of autism is unknown, but autism has been associated with a number of diseases, including prenatal rubella. Rubella vaccine challenge was used in an attempt to retrospectively diagnose prenatal rubella in autistic children. This test was selected because unresponsiveness of antibody titer has been reported as helpful in retrospective diagnosing of prenatal rubella. Fifteen autistic children and 8 controls matched for age were challenged with rubella vaccine. Rubella vaccine challenge did not differentiate autistic children from the control subjects. However, 5 of 13 autistic children had undetectable titers despite previous vaccine; all control subjects had detectable titers. This finding of undetectable titers in autistic children suggests these children may have an altered immune response.