Not until the middle of the 20th Century was there a name for a disorder that now appears to affect an estimated 3.4 out of every of every 1,000 children ages 3-10, a disorder that causes disruption in families and unfulfilled lives for many children.  In 1943 Dr. Leo Kanner of the Johns Hopkins Hospital studied a group of 11 children and introduced the lavel early infantile autism into the English language.  At the same time a German scientist, Dr. Hans Asperger, described a milder form of the disorder that became known as Asperger Syndrome,  Thus, these two disorders were described and are today listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR(fourth edition, text revision) as two of the five pervasive disorders developmental disorders (PDD), more often referred to today as autism spectrum disorders (ASD).  All these disorders are characterized by varying degrees of impairment in communication skills, social interactions, and restricted, repetitive, stereotyped patterns of behavior.