At the same time, in 1943 – separated by distance, the Second World War

and apparently unaware of each other’s work – Leo Kanner, at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in the
US, described 11 children with striking behavioral similarities to those depicted by Asperger in his
classical paper “Autistic disturbances of affective contact” (Kanner, 1943). Most of the characteristics
described by Kanner such as “autistic aloofness” and “insistence on sameness” are still part of the
criteria to diagnose autism in current classifications. Children described by Asperger differed from those
of Kanner in that they had no significant delays in cognitive or language development.(SICILLYA E, 2013)