Parent Observation Based Study: Children With Autism Disorders as Early as 12 Months Display Highly Elevated Range of Repetitive Behaviors

Some study results that don't surprise me given the use of parent observation, the most, and perhaps only,  reliable source of information concerning autism symptoms during children's infancy:

Longitudinal patterns of repetitive behavior in toddlers with autism

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 

"Conclusions

"These findings suggest that as early as 12 months of age, a broad range of repetitive behaviors are highly elevated in children who go on to develop ASD. While some degree of repetitive behavior is elemental to typical early development, the extent of these behaviors among children who develop ASD appears highly atypical."

Jason J. Wolff1,*, Kelly N. Botteron3, Stephen R. Dager4, Jed T. Elison5, Annette M. Estes6, Hongbin Gu2, Heather C. Hazlett1,2, Juhi Pandey7, Sarah J. Paterson7, Robert T. Schultz7, Lonnie Zwaigenbaum8, Joseph Piven1,2The IBIS Network†

Although our son Conor's autism diagnosis was received the day after his 2nd birthday the symptoms which prompted us to seek medical attention for our severely autistic son, lack of language development beyond some strange words (not mommy or daddy), strange sensory oriented behaviors and repetitive behaviors, were obvious by his 1st birthday. Unlike some prominent adult diagnosed autistics no one suggested he was autistic before we sought medical attention and we did not come to that conclusion ourselves. We had never heard of autism before Conor's diagnosis was presented to us and there were few autism specific services available through our public health or education services at that time.       

While Conor's autism diagnosis was delivered at 2 plus 1 day the symptoms were apparent by 1 year of age. This report, using parent observation is entirely consistent with my son's development and our observations.  I am happy to see a study which reflects the real life observations of our son's development and which I am quite sure is consistent with that of many severely autistic children. 

I sincerely applaud, and give 2 thumbs up to, the research team of Wolff et al for conducting some  autism research based on parent observation.