Preliminary analyses of 12 home movies taken by parents before the recognition of autistic disorders of their own child confirm the major value of this method for describing early signs: anomalies of eye contact, deficient variability of emotional expression, defect of attention and initiation of communication, motor abnormalities, etc. The possibilities of subsequently using these documents in a research context are described: behavior assignment with a rating scale, comparative analysis with movies of normal children, blind examination, and scoring by investigators not informed of the diagnosis.
The modified Behavior Observation Scale adapted from Freeman et al. was used to compare normal, retarded, and autistic children with very low developmental ages and to determine the types of behavior that could differentiate these three diagnostic categories of children. Examination of the data revealed that there was much more overlap between autistic and retarded children than between autistic and normal children. However, a behavioral pattern of autism could be delineated and very retarded autistic children could be distinguished from the nonautistic retarded children. The autistic behavioral pattern included subclusters of symptoms that might be interpreted as disturbances of sensory modulation and motility.
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