She suggests parents do the “tilting test”, in which they tilt a child from an upright position by 45 degrees right or left. But if a child shows a cluster of symptoms, she says, they may have the syndrome. She cautions that individual symptoms, such as the Moebius mouth, cannot be used to diagnose Asperger’s Syndrome.

“They didn’t have the protective reflexes of any normal child – they fall like a log,” says Osnat Teitelbaum, first author of the study and an expert in movement notation. The results backed earlier observations made by the team on autism in 1998. They fell without extending their arms to protect them or keeping their heads perpendicular to the floor, as most infants do. Eight of the infants had a “Moebius mouth”, a sign of neurological damage that appears as a tented upper lip and flat lower lip.Īnd the infants had trouble sitting and standing upright. The researchers then scrutinised the videos of 16 children frame by frame.Ĭertain physical characteristics stood out, such as falling to one side while walking. They asked parents of children who were later diagnosed with Asperger’s for videos of the children when they were less than a year old. So researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, set out to see if body movements could betray the disorder in infants. Asperger’s Syndrome, however, has more subtle effects on language and usually does not become apparent until the age of seven. The conditions are marked by difficulty relating to other people and repetitive behaviour.īut autism is usually diagnosed much earlier than Asperger’s – by the age of three – because it hinders language development.

Earlier diagnosis may one day lead to a better prognosis for children with Asperger’s syndrome.Īs many as one in 200 children in the US suffer from either autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, which both appear to have genetic roots. Strange body movements may reveal whether infants have a mild form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome, say researchers in the US.

Baby bottom lip quiver 6 months