How Early Can Autism Be Detected?

This may change with the years around the detection, I've been in the field for almost 40 years and when I started the field it was not uncommon for it to be to five years of age when children are being detected, but we've moved much earlier in the detection, it's not unusual these days to have children detected as earlier as 12 months and sometimes even younger.

And the reason it's gotten earlier is because we've gotten better at looking at different features of autism, the primary feature why parents seek the diagnosis is communication, communication that communication disorder. We've learned to look non-role communication, not having to wait until 12 months, 18 months so to pick that up, you can pick non-verbal communication disorders much earlier than that.

So it's not unusual that we can get that look at that child who is not pointing, who is not imitating, who is not using non-verbal imitation and as a character, one of the characteristics of autism.