First, subjects were not selected from among the typically more cooperative population of adult patients with autism, pediatric patients presenting with high-functioning autism or pediatric patients with Asperger's syndrome. Instead, our subjects represented a mid-range cross-section of childhood autism and PDD-nos as referred to area specialists. The EEG technologists who performed the data acquisition were highly experienced in the EEG studies of pediatric patients who frequently require special management in order to acquire useful data. Second, with the anticipation that such patients would none-the-less likely provide data containing some group specific artifact, a special process was employed to recognize, hopefully remove and at least diminish ASD-group specific artifact. Third, an equally large database of well studied inclusive of EEG, neuro-typical children of comparable age and gender distribution was available for comparative purposes. Fourth, instead of a priori limitation of EEG coherence to certain scalp channels or spectral frequencies as is frequently the case, all available scalp channels and spectral bands were utilized by employment of a method of data reduction based on Principal Components Analysis (PCA) [52,53], which has previously
