Explaining autism

Witness History

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ground-breaking work by developmental psychologist Professor Uta Frith has revolutionised our understanding of autism. Beginning in the 1960s, Professor Frith's research has overturned the long-held belief that autism was a social or emotional disorder, showing instead that it's the result of physical differences in the brain. Uta Frith has been talking to Louise Hidalgo.

Picture: Uta Frith at her desk at the Medical Research Council Developmental Psychology Unit in London in the late 60s/early 70s (exact date unknown). From the personal collection of Uta Frith.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC
0:35.4	Sounds.
0:36.4	Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast here on the BBC World Service
0:47.4	first-hand accounts of events that have shaped our world. I'm Louise
0:51.8	Adaggo and today we look back at one scientist's
0:54.4	groundbreaking work on autism a condition that affects one in every 160
0:59.6	children. World-renowned developmentalologist Professor Uter Frith's studies of autistic children and adults have helped to revolutionize our understanding of the condition, overturning long-held beliefs that it's a social or emotional
1:14.5	disorder and instead discovering is the result of physical differences in the brain.
1:21.5	I think I was attracted to autism because it was a big enigma, a mystery. I think it still is.
1:30.0	It is extraordinary what it can tell us about our mind and I think we have still so far to go.
1:38.0	It was back in the 1960s that a young Uttar Frith first encountered people with autism. I had never heard of autism and in fact very few people had, but by just very good fortune I was extremely lucky as a student to actually meet autistic
1:56.2	children and for the first time hear about how very very puzzling this
2:01.7	condition was.
2:03.0	Ruta had arrived in London from a grey post-war Germany for a two-week English course.
2:08.0	But that summer she got an internship at the Institute of Psychiatry and decided to stay.
2:14.9	Britain's first ever professor of child psychiatry, Michael Rutter was at the Institute and
2:19.8	children came from all over the world, didn't they his clinic to be diagnosed which is where of course you met them yes
	...

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