LEO KANNER

Leo Kanner was a child psychologist working in Boston, USA. He recognised an unusual pattern of behaviour in a number of children referred to his clinic..

Kanner named the children's condition ‘early infantile autism’. In 1943, Kanner published an original paper on his findings. In the paper, Kanner gave detailed descriptions of the children’s behaviour but selected certain features he felt were essential for diagnosis. These features included:

"Extreme autistic aloneness" – the children failed to relate to other people normally and appeared to be happiest when left alone. This lack of social responsiveness appeared to Kanner to start very early in life.

"Anxiously obsessive desire for the preservation of sameness" – the children were extremely upset by changes of routine or surroundings. A different route to school, a rearrangement of furniture, would cause a tantrum. The child could not calmed down until the familiar order was restored.

"Excellent rote memory" – many of the children could memorise large amounts of material, that seemed to have no practical use, eg an encyclopaedia index page. This was seemingly out of line with their apparent learning difficulties in other respects.

"Delayed echolalia" – the children tended repeated words and phrases they heard, but failed to use words to communicate beyond their immediate needs. [When children with autism are asked a question, they commonly repeated the whole question as a request for the item, eg ‘Do you want a sweet?’ meaning ‘I want a sweet’.)

"Over-sensitivity to stimuli" – Kanner noticed that many of the children reacted strongly to certain noises or objects, such as elevators, vacuum cleaners, even the wind. Some also showed feeding problems or food fads.

"Limitation in the variety of spontaneous activity" – shown in the children’s repetitive movements, speech and interests. However, Kanner noted that the children often showed a good relation to objects, sometimes displaying surprising dexterity in spinning things or completing jigsaw puzzles.

"Good cognitive potentialities" – Kanner believed that the outstanding memory and dexterity shown by some of his cases reflected a superior intelligence. Parents and teachers often feel this too – that children with autism could if only they would. The good memory which some individuals with ASD display may be particular ‘tantalising’, leading one to feel that if it were turned into some practical use, the child would learn well. In addition, unlike children with many types of learning difficulties (eg. Down’s syndrome), children with autism usually look "normal", and some authors have described some children with autism as unusually beautiful.

"Highly intelligent families" – Kanner remarked that all his cases had intellectual parents. However, this was probably not representative, and was more due to referral bias to his clinic.

In his later writing (Kanner & Eisenberg 1956), Kanner suggested that only the first two features were essential for diagnosis. He considered the other symptoms to be either secondary to, and caused by these two elements, or non-specific to autism. He also stressed that the condition was present from birth or within the first 30 months of life.

Kanner believed that the syndrome was unique and separate from other childhood conditions. Interest in Kanner’s work grew slowly at first and then more rapidly and is now the focus of much research in many different countries.