Autism is three times more likely to affect males than females. This gender difference is not unique since many developmental disabilities have a greater male to female ratio. Most autistic children are perfectly normal in appearance, but spend their time engaged in puzzling and disturbing behaviors which are noticeably different from those of normal children. They have been described as living in a world of their own. Some autistic individuals are remarkably gifted in certain areas such as mathematics, music, etc.
Many autistic infants are different from birth.
As infants, they are often described as either passive or overly agitated babies. During childhood, autistic children may fall behind in their same-aged peers in the areas of communication, social skills, and cognition. Another common characteristic found in children with autism is that these individuals primarily use communication as a way to request objects or to control the behavior of others rather than as the means for social initiation. This tends to be the results of abnormal emergences of communicative functions in children with autism. Typically developing children acquire the ability to use gestures and vocalizations to serve a variety of functions simultaneously.