January 12, 2021

Autism, film and patterns

45 minutes

If, and, then are the 3 words which underpin Simon Baron-Cohen's exploration of how humans reason and develop solutions to problems in his latest book The Pattern Seekers. He joins author Michelle Gallen, film historian Andrew Roberts and Bonnie Evans whose research includes the history of childhood and developmental science in a discussion about how we understand autism presented by Matthew Sweet.

Michelle Gallen's novel Big Girl, Small Town is available now.

Simon Baron-Cohen is clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge where he runs the Autism Research Centre. His book is called The Pattern Seekers - A New Theory of Human Invention.

Bonnie Evans has written The Metamorphosis of Autism: A History of Child Development in Britain and is Senior Researcher at Queen Mary, University of London on the collaborative Wellcome Trust project https://www.autism-through-cinema.org.uk/

You might be interested that the winner of the Royal Society Science Books Prize 2020 was Camilla Pang's memoir Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

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By BBC Radio 4

4.3