Family characteristics of autistic children: a further report

The personality features of parents of a group of 21 well-functioning autistic children have been described previously. The main characteristics of these parents were social gaucheness and a tendency towards the single-minded pursuit of special, often intellectual, interests. We now present the agreement between research interviewers and clinician in the diagnosis of these parents as schizoid, together with clinical details of those parents rated by both as having definite schizoid traits. The educational functioning of the siblings of the autistic children compared with that of siblings of a matched control group is also reported.