09:30 Monday 21 October 2013  Autistic children look less
friendly to peers, Cambridge research suggests   Children with
autism face a lifetime of social exclusion due to the very
nature of their facial expressions, a new study has shown.  The
research, published in the journal Autism, suggests that
typically developed children form negative impressions of
autistic children after just a 30-second encounter, which can
potentially ostracise them from an early age.  Dr Steven Stagg,
a lecturer in psychology at Anglia Ruskin, believes this
research shows the need for greater social cohesion between
autistic and typically developed” children, and more crucially,
a better focus interpersonal skills between the two groups
rather than solely on the former.  The researchers from Anglia
Ruskin and Royal Holloway mixed silent videos of typically
developing 11-year-olds with videos of children with autism of a
similar age.  They then asked 44 school children, aged 11, to
rate the children in the video, who were unaware t