Autism A biologically based developmental disorder, autism lasts throughout one’s lifetime. Although it is most commonly accompanied with mental retardation, autism can be traced to all IQ levels. Sometimes referred to as a behavioral syndrome, autism is a collection of symptoms that characteristically occur together. Autism was first diagnosed in 1943, when Leo Kanner was observing a group of eleven children. He introduced the term “early infantile autism.” In the beginning some thought that autistic children had withdrawn from human contact but in all actuality, they had never established it in the first place. Affecting communication, socializ