Compliance with parental prohibition in autistic children.

In a controlled observational study of young autistic children ages 3 to 5, responses to parental prohibition were compared to those of mental-age-matched mentally retarded and normal children. The children were prohibited from eating a candy offered to them by the experimenter. Behavioral response, affect, and gaze patterns were compared across the three groups. Autistic children exhibited significantly less compliant behavior than did children in the two control groups; this behavior correlated with chronological age, not with mental age, language development, or parental behavior. Although affect and gaze patterns of the autistic children were different from the controls, these patterns were not correlated with compliant behavior. In conclusion, when compared to mental-age-matched control groups, autistic children are significantly less compliant to parental prohibition and they show different gaze and affect patterns.