As a past PhD candidate at Adelaide University in Australia in the late 1970s, early 80s, I used home videos of young ASD children and developmental age-matched controls to examine joint attention, signaling and response to caregiver signaling, behaviour while completing cognitive testing tasks such as the slinky toy etc. I discovered clear differences in the sequences of gaze, signaling and attentional behaviour of the children. My conclusions centred around whether the children found stimuli salient or not in communication and testing environments. Dr Neal O'Connor from the Institute of Psychiatry in London viewed and discussed possible conclusions along these lines with me when visiting the university.
