Furthermore, unlike Kanner’s patients, they had no delays in acquiring language and did not speak in surreal aphorisms, opaque neologisms, or echolalic references to themselves in the third person. In fact, they tended to be precociously articulate—particularly when they were expounding on the subjects that fascinated them. (“One 13-year-old boy, after a brief acquaintance, wanted to talk about mortgages,” they reported.) These children only decisively withdrew from interactions with adults at the center when they figured out that they weren’t really interested in what they were saying.
