Eleven male children exhibited similar, unusual behavior patterns of
demanding sameness in their routines and an abnormal need to be alone.
Additional research with children diagnosed with autism uncovered other
similarities among the children that included: (a) the ability to ignore the
presence of others; (b) the inability to communicate through language at
all or simply by parroting what another spoke; (c) the capacity for end-
lessly stacking or lining up objects; and (d) the skill of memorizing trivia
(Kanner, 1973).