Abstract

Autism is one of the most studied and debated psychological conditions in the world. But what if there is something fundamentally wrong with the way in which the world’s leading neuroscientists and experimental psychologists have sought to understood autism? In the last two decades, international investment in autism science has grown extensively and the number of papers published on autism increased 10-fold, far surpassing publications on related topics. Yet little of this research has been successfully translated into meaningful supports and services that can help autistic people overcome the obstacles they frequently face in life. And even more worryingly, little of it appears to map on to the everyday experience of autism as understood by autistic people themselves. In this talk, I consider two reasons why this might be the case – first, autism science’s failure to work collaboratively with the broader autism community and, second, its apparent unwillingness to test experimental findings within the context of the everyday. In this way, I challenge the conventional wisdom of autism science and encourages us to think again about the way in which we approach the relationship between laboratory and life. Liz Pellicano is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Professor at Macquarie University, having previously been Professor of Autism Education and Director of the Centre for Research in Autism and Education at University College London. She trained as a developmental cognitive psychologist at the University of Western Australia, where she also completed a PhD on the cognitive profile of autistic children in 2005, before becoming a Junior Research Fellow in Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, and Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol. Best known for her theoretical accounts of autistic cognition and perception, her current research seeks to identify ways to bridge the gap between lab and life and open up scientific investigation to greater involvement of autistic people themselves, with the aim of generating discoveries that bring real benefits to autistic people and their families.