Kanner
How
many people have autistic spectrum disorders?
The specific pattern of abnormal behaviour first
described by Leo Kanner is also known as ‘early infantile autism’. Kanner
made no estimate of the possible numbers of people with this condition but he
thought that it was rare (Kanner 1943).
Over twenty years later, Victor Lotter published
the first results of an epidemiological study of children with the behaviour
pattern described by Kanner in the former county of Middlesex, which gave an
overall prevalence rate of 4.5 per 10,000 children (Lotter 1966).
Biographical material on Leo Kanner
Archives Finding Aid - Kanner papers
"Autistics disturbances of affective contact" by Leo Kanner - downloadable cases