NeuroTribes: The Untold History of Austim and the Potential of Neurodiversity

by Steve Silberman

they pointed out that such children “call to mind the syndrome described by Kanner under the designation of ‘Early Infantile Autism,’ ” with certain differences. Unlike the Tripletts and the Muncies, the parents of these children felt that they were “normal babies” for the first years of their lives; only as they grew older and failed to make friends their own age (preferring to hang around adults) did their eccentricities become clear. They were capable of “good emotional responsiveness” to other people, but tended to be consumed with their special interests to the exclusion of more social activities. Robinson and Vitale made the interesting observation that the pursuit of these interests did not seem to be motivated by a craving for approval and reinforcement from others, but were driven by a feeling of “satisfaction from within the child.” They enjoyed learning for its own sake, as Asperger had observed a decade earlier. 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.