Most young animals, from newly hatched chicks to 2-day-old humans, are exquisitely sensitive to the movements of other animals. But 2-year-old children with autism don't pay special attention to this so-called 'biological motion', according to a study published today in Nature.Unlike healthy children of the same age, toddlers with autism show no preference for scenes of a purely social nature — such as the waving arms and cooing noises of an adult playing 'peek-a-boo' — compared with the same scenes shown upside down.Children with autism instead pay more attention to scenes in which large movements are perfectly synchronized with loud noises, such as the pronounced hand claps of a 'pat-a-cake' game, the study found.Read more at...SFARI, March 2009.