A lot of high-functioning ASD patients can minimize their presentations by
ABA corrections.
ASD patients fail to recognize emotions. One famous study is to let them
watch an emotion-intense movie clip. The two actors in the clip are carrying
out a conversation with a lot of facial expressions. The exact eye movement
of the test subjects can be recorded precisely on the screen via a complex
device. It turned out that normal subjects were focused on the eyes and
faces of the actors, while ASD patients' eyes were more fixed on the mouths
and edge of the heads, even the curtains in the background.
ASD diagnosis is currently made at 5 years of age on average. This is
considered a late age for interventions. That's probably why researchers are
putting efforts to diagnose it earlier, in order to intervene earlier. The
mentality in the field is that it does less harm to over-diagnose if early
intervention can be carried on immediately.