... delay in the acquisition of speech together with abnormalities of language, an excellent rote memory, and an obsessive desire for the maintenance of sameness. Kanner also suggested that although patients had some inborn unitary defect, the disorder was, in part, due to lack of affection from parents and concluded that Autism was partly psychogenic due to "emotional refrigeration". It is considered as a serious abnormality in the developmental process that manifest in early infancy, therefore it also differed from symptoms of childhood schizophrenia. It is for this reason that the American Psychiatric Association (1980) classification, DSM-III, categorized autism under pervasive developmental disorders. APA and the World Health Organization concentrated on four main sets of diagnostic criteria. The first requirement for the criteria was that the disorder be manifested before 30 months of age. This criterion led to some confusion because it is often hard to distinguish between specific autistic features ...

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