These students can be thought of as high-functioning students with autism. It can be hard to discriminate the behavior pattern of a child with Aspergers Syndrome from child throwing a tantrum. Autism is a neurological disorder. The autism student's behaviors are symptoms of what going on in the student's brain. Many more students have autism that we thought.
Autism seems to occur in clusters.
There are multiple children in a family with the disorder. We can also identify autism at an earlier age than was previously thought. By examining the motor patterns of children, we can diagnose autism at 5 months of age based on differences in movement patterns, how the child turns, and how the child moves his or her head in relation to the body. Most children with autism do make eye contact, and most are physically affectionate. However, they handle physical touch better when they are in control of it and initiate contact.