TRIGGERnometry - The World's Leading Autism Expert - Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen

00:00:00.000 what is autism so autism for me is a disability and a difference you know and some of those

00:00:09.320 differences are strengths even talents autistic people have played a key role in human invention

00:00:17.560 what should a parent do if they're looking at their child and thinking to themselves

00:00:21.560 could they be autistic what are the classic signs and how should this person get help essentially

00:00:27.460 get more support how much do we know about where autism comes from is there any evidence for

00:00:34.440 environmental factors or vaccines or anything like that

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00:00:52.760 click the link in the description of this episode or go to triggerpod.co.uk to join us

00:00:59.200 dr simon baroncon welcome trigonometry thank you for inviting me it's great to have you on you are

00:01:04.440 this is no exaggeration to say you are the world's leading expert on autism uh it's a growth industry

00:01:10.500 given that autism rates are skyrocketing yeah uh it's something that lots of people have

00:01:15.760 questions about trying to understand wrap the heads around personal experiences as well

00:01:20.560 let's start with the basics what is autism it sounds like a very basic straightforward question

00:01:26.680 um i work at the autism research center we've got a team of about 50 people if you ask that

00:01:34.220 apparently simple question what is autism to any of our researchers they'd probably scratch their heads

00:01:40.320 so i can have a go at giving you my definition uh so autism for me is a disability

00:01:48.100 disability and a difference so the disability tends to be in social relationships communication um

00:01:56.520 adjusting to unexpected change so people with autistic people struggle with with those things

00:02:02.220 the differences tend to be um i would say mostly positive uh things like excellent attention to detail

00:02:11.220 uh excellent memory for detail um very strong pattern recognition so we might talk about that because

00:02:20.580 that was the topic of my recent book you know and some of those differences are strengths as i said

00:02:26.380 uh even talents so that's why when i think about autism the old view was it was a disorder even a

00:02:35.020 disease quite kind of pejorative language today we kind of use um i'm quite keen to hold on to the 0.58

00:02:42.060 disability element so when you get your diagnosis of autism it should be a signal that you need support

00:02:49.100 because you're struggling in some way but it's not we don't want autistic people to be defined just by

00:02:54.980 their disability uh those differences you know are often an advantage people even talk about the

00:03:01.820 autism advantage um and if you put both of those two sides of autism together disability and difference

00:03:10.500 these days we we think about it under the heading of neurodiversity the idea that brains develop

00:03:17.020 differently um you know we've thrown out the old view that there's a a normal brain and there's a an

00:03:25.320 abnormal brain you know that that was how i was trained but this is like back in the 80s or 90s

00:03:31.240 today we think about there are just lots of different kinds of brains none is better or

00:03:37.860 worse than another they're just different and autism is one of those varieties and what's the

00:03:44.200 difference between autism and asperger syndrome right so the term asperger syndrome is no longer used

00:03:52.380 in sort of academic or clinical circles because we found that asperger was a naughty basically that 1.00

00:03:58.400 didn't help you know that was that was that was that was in 2018 and i was the um editor-in-chief of

00:04:07.980 the journal where we published the article right by a historian of of medicine who had uncovered that

00:04:14.460 asperger the pediatrician hans asperger had collaborated with the nazis during world war two

00:04:20.220 um so you know imagine having a diagnosis named after someone who is now recognized to be a nazi

00:04:28.040 collaborator so that was one reason why that's no longer used but actually even before that back in

00:04:33.640 2013 the american psychiatric association had proposed to remove asperger syndrome from the psychiatric

00:04:42.880 classification system because it wasn't being used in a consistent way by different clinicians

00:04:48.280 but to answer your question asperger syndrome is basically autism without any learning disability

00:04:54.960 so it leads us on to this point that autism is often accompanied by other things you can be

00:05:03.100 autistic and have a learning disability in the u.s they call it intellectual disability

00:05:08.120 or you can have autism without so that's what we we used to call asperger syndrome today it all just

00:05:14.900 goes under this umbrella called autism um which is sort of confusing because it means you could have

00:05:20.900 an individual who has you know very significant needs maybe they'll never live independently uh perhaps

00:05:28.640 can't make it through mainstream education may struggle for you know employment independence but you can

00:05:35.940 also have autistic people who have university degrees are living independently it's a very broad

00:05:41.660 spectrum just covered by this single word autism and some people find that that's actually not

00:05:48.320 helpful well i was going to ask you i mean if a spectrum includes somebody ranging from elon musk on

00:05:54.280 the one hand yeah and someone who's non-verbal and incapable of living by themselves yeah is is that a

00:06:01.580 spectrum or is that a kind of almost too wide a range that that's not necessarily that helpful

00:06:07.980 yeah if if i say my son is autistic he's not but if if i said that you don't know which of these

00:06:14.640 we're talking about exactly um so this is a very live issue within the autism community and within

00:06:21.820 researchers and clinicians who work with autistic people you know whether we should lump them together

00:06:28.220 they're called the lumpers or whether we should split them they're called the splitters 1.00

00:06:33.040 into two subgroups or or more than two subgroups and at the moment you know they're all they're lumped

00:06:40.600 together you know but i think scientifically we we probably make more progress if we have subgroups

00:06:47.660 and you know we do that with other areas of medicine you know we have i don't know diabetes type

00:06:54.200 one in type two or different kinds of cancers we don't just call everything a single form of cancer

00:07:01.660 um you know so i think scientific progress is made when you have fine-grained distinctions and that's

00:07:08.660 the same is true i think for services support services you know if autistic people are they're so

00:07:16.140 different to each other we might need different types of services for different types of people

00:07:21.340 um but at the moment we have a single sort of umbrella concept and simon i really loved your

00:07:29.120 book because it seemed to me that it was a celebration of the autistic mind yeah and you

00:07:34.100 wanted to actually talk about the positives of autism because as somebody who used to teach everyone

00:07:39.360 can now drink it's become a joke on i refer to it in every episode but i i do understand the very

00:07:45.280 real struggles and challenges that autistic children face yeah in the classroom or in the playground

00:07:50.840 but what was so interesting about this book is that it was a celebration of the autistic mind so

00:07:56.160 let's talk about that a little bit yeah i'm glad you read it that way that's how it was intended

00:08:01.880 um because for the longest time in the history of autism research we've defined autistic people by the

00:08:09.640 things that they have difficulty with and we'd sort of not put into the spotlight the things that

00:08:16.060 autistic people can really flourish and shine at and the focus i took in that book was about pattern

00:08:22.960 recognition hence the title the pattern seekers um and the idea is that you know pattern seeking or

00:08:31.320 pattern recognition itself lies on the spectrum so you could take groups of people in the population

00:08:37.620 and you could measure this skill and you'd find some people are just kind of average some people are below

00:08:43.300 average some people above average and this seems to be where you find autistic people so it's kind of 0.99

00:08:49.540 like shifting the focus onto things they can do not things that they struggle with and by doing that

00:08:55.680 um the intention obviously is to kind of revisit autism in terms of not only um what can they do but

00:09:05.560 what role could they play in society because we know a lot of autistic people are excluded in society

00:09:10.940 uh high rates of unemployment something like 85 percent of autistic adults are unemployed a lot of um

00:09:19.000 dropping out of high school so not leaving with with high school qualifications uh so you know it's kind

00:09:26.860 of a bleak picture but actually if we focus on their strengths i'm hoping that readers of this book

00:09:32.600 might include employers for example who might think well i could give that guy a job he could really help me

00:09:38.260 in my bicycle shop because you need a good attention to detail for assembling a bicycle and

00:09:44.240 fine-tuning it um and part of what i try to do in the book is talk about pattern recognition as

00:09:52.020 systemizing so being able to take any system could be a bicycle that's the example i've started with

00:09:59.080 but it could be anything it could be a computer could be a mathematical equation could be a piece of

00:10:04.960 of music all of these things are systems because within the system there are lawful regularities

00:10:11.440 there are laws or rules or patterns that repeat and autistic people might be just very quick at spotting 1.00

00:10:18.120 the patterns and once you've spotted the pattern you can either control the system or you can refine

00:10:25.680 the system um and that's why the subtitle of the book is about invention how autistic people have played

00:10:32.760 a key role in human invention and this is this is really kind of moving autism away from

00:10:40.460 disability and into what some people would say is our crowning glory as a species you know that we can

00:10:47.880 invent we're the only species on the planet that currently or has ever lived that can invent generatively

00:10:56.540 um and that word generatively is kind of important because it's the idea that we don't just invent once

00:11:03.040 we can invent over and over again um and it could be something small like this coffee cup somebody had to

00:11:09.680 invent it here's another tool you know that someone invented these things to help me see better but we just

00:11:17.980 look around us we've got cameras here all of these things are inventions and they all have patterns or laws that

00:11:24.000 govern them and when you systemize you're kind of trying to analyze the system to really understand

00:11:31.260 and predict how the system works and then invention comes in when you just play with the components in

00:11:38.120 the system and think well i could take this one out and put something else in and get a better outcome

00:11:43.560 and that's the the essence of systemizing and autistic people just seem to be drawn to systems

00:11:50.220 so even if they're struggling with relationships they're kind of scanning the world in terms of

00:11:56.340 that's interesting there's a pattern there you know i've seen that before kind of repeating their

00:12:01.460 observations um and so taking things apart putting them back together again but maybe in new ways

00:12:08.040 absolutely and one of the people that you talk about is you call him out in the book yeah and i was a

00:12:13.940 very special person let's talk about our first of all and then we can go on to what everybody knows

00:12:19.440 who al is by another name yeah sure so you know i talk about this man who um as a child was

00:12:27.520 fascinated with patterns and uh kind of just understanding the world uh the physical world

00:12:34.140 always kind of building things in this workshop um as a young man al was fascinated by morse code

00:12:42.260 which is another set of patterns you know either visual or auditory kind of um sounds or

00:12:49.220 dashes and dots um you know but al grew up to be edison and thomas edison who was an inventor a

00:12:59.480 prolific inventor not just known because he invented the first electric light bulb but actually he had

00:13:05.920 loads of patterns to his name he was just constantly inventing um his obsession with morse code

00:13:13.380 kind of lasted well into his teens and young adulthood so that he um called his first two

00:13:20.960 children dot and dash um and he's good good inventor terrible father i don't know i don't know what he

00:13:30.100 was like as a father but you can sort of see you know what his preoccupation um his wife according to 0.74

00:13:38.520 his biographies his his wife moved his mattress into his workshop so that he could basically sleep

00:13:44.580 there and just be in his workshop day and night he was always just dragging things in from around

00:13:49.720 um the house and you know wherever he went in life dragging in things that he could perhaps use

00:13:56.900 i could use a bit of that or a bit of that to build a contraption and you know you get this sense

00:14:02.680 of someone who is maybe obsessive and that's a word that is often used with autistic people very kind

00:14:09.020 of laser focused you know could spend all day and all night trying to work out the system to really

00:14:15.880 you know get it to work or to invent something new and obviously someone like edison is just

00:14:22.420 one person it's kind of an anecdote uh so some of the book talks about these you know inventors who may

00:14:30.240 have had a lot of autistic traits but as a scientist i also like to go to the data and so

00:14:38.000 what we do in in cambridge where i'm based is look at population data for example so looking at

00:14:45.020 the general population um giving people a questionnaire which measures how many autistic traits you have

00:14:53.160 we all have some autistic traits and what we find is if you divide the general population

00:14:58.640 into those who work in stem science technology engineering or maths or those who don't work in stem

00:15:05.320 the people in stem have more autistic traits so it's kind of evidence that an aptitude or a talent

00:15:14.440 in systems thinking understanding how systems work also goes hand in hand with more autistic traits

00:15:22.400 and what's interesting is you talk about the high systemizing mind but let's talk which is and just

00:15:28.320 explain to the audience what you mean by that term and also and for want of a better way of putting it

00:15:34.240 the the term that you use at the opposite end of the spectrum as well because i think that's a very

00:15:38.800 effective way to understand the autistic mind or people who are very high level autistic traits

00:15:46.080 yeah um so the idea is that um we don't just have to be limited by having a formal diagnosis

00:15:54.540 you know something like three percent of the population now has an autism diagnosis much more

00:16:01.320 common than it used to be which is what you said at the beginning of our conversation but that's still

00:16:06.040 a minority whereas an aptitude in systemizing uh might extend beyond people who've got an autism diagnosis

00:16:15.140 you know edison didn't have one you know um people talk about isaac newton maybe he had a lot of

00:16:23.040 autistic traits and he was a systemizer you know analyzing light and sound for example in his physics

00:16:29.400 too and gravity famously you know so there might be lots of people out in the world who are very good

00:16:36.480 at systemizing but don't have a diagnosis of autism maybe don't need one you know because the diagnosis

00:16:42.880 is only needed if your autistic traits are resulting in difficulties you know and that could arise

00:16:51.240 perhaps because you're in the wrong environment that your kind of mind may be very well suited to

00:16:57.520 the world of mathematics or music or engineering but if they put if some you know if you find yourself

00:17:04.880 in a very sociable environment where you're expected to be able to switch quickly from one conversation

00:17:11.200 to another and um cultivate relationships and understand humor and you know non-literal language

00:17:19.180 suddenly your autistic traits which kind of drive you to look for patterns um turn into disability

00:17:26.480 so it's all about the kind of fit between the individual and their surroundings

00:17:31.080 and again the book is all about sort of making sure that when we identify autistic kids at the

00:17:37.980 earliest age we create the right environment for them to flourish and how much do we know about

00:17:44.520 where autism comes from like what causes it if you might say yeah um we know a lot so um you know the

00:17:56.080 biggest part of the cause of autism is genetics and that's because autism runs in families that's how we

00:18:03.480 know that but also these days the field of molecular genetics is thriving and a month doesn't go past

00:18:12.960 without new genetic evidence coming through linking autism to genetics so we now know for example there

00:18:20.920 are over a hundred genes that are associated with autism so autism isn't the result of a single gene

00:18:27.320 um there's lots of genes involved um there's lots of genes involved the genes that have been found are

00:18:32.160 mostly what are called uh rare genetic variants or mutations and they're only seen in about i don't

00:18:39.940 know five or ten percent of autistic people but they're much more common those mutations are much more

00:18:46.340 common in autism compared to the general population uh but that's not the whole of the genetic

00:18:53.780 element because there's also common genetics involved so genes that we all carry in the

00:19:01.000 population but which come in different versions of the gene and increasingly scientists are finding

00:19:06.640 many of these common genetic variations are also linked to autism and it's all about you know the

00:19:14.660 combination of these common genetic variants that may be more common in autistic people so there's

00:19:21.460 genetics it's not a hundred percent genetic you know you can have two identical twins where one is

00:19:28.480 autistic and one isn't so if autism was a hundred percent genetic then given that identical twins are like

00:19:35.660 clones of each other if one is autistic then the other one should also be but the fact that you can find 0.82

00:19:41.100 pairs of twins who are they're called discordant means there must be a non-genetic element as well

00:19:47.940 and we've been looking at uh the role of hormones particularly sex linked hormones like testosterone

00:19:55.280 and estrogen um and we started looking at that partly because autism is diagnosed more often in boys

00:20:03.880 and the male fetus produces twice as much testosterone as the female fetus and that this hormone changes

00:20:12.880 brain development you know during pregnancy changing the way that the baby's brain is developing so we

00:20:19.520 looked at that and through collaborations with uh danish scientists we found indeed that autistic kids who go 0.97

00:20:28.260 on to have a diagnosis of autism had elevated levels of testosterone and estrogen in the womb so their brains

00:20:37.160 were exposed to higher levels of these hormones and these hormones can interact with the genetics

00:20:42.960 so the genetics are still important but the hormones come in and change the genes change gene expression

00:20:49.260 so it's quite a complex story you asked me you know what seemed like a straightforward question what 0.98

00:20:55.460 causes autism but it's quite complex well we have lots of lots more stupid questions that are quite 0.98

00:21:00.680 complicated it wasn't stupid i'm kidding yeah um you shouldn't have to rearrange your life to deal 0.98

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00:22:20.680 safety information some say the bubbles in an aero truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your

00:22:27.040 mouth sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light rich creamy chocolatey aero truffle

00:22:33.860 feel the aero bubbles melt it's mind bubbling one question obviously currently uh you just wrote an article

00:22:43.080 responding to some of the things that the american administration is doing in relation to autism and

00:22:48.760 is there any evidence for environmental factors or vaccines or anything like that yeah uh causing

00:22:56.560 people perhaps activating genes that were already there or in some way leading to to autism yeah um so i

00:23:05.080 didn't write the article but there was an article with an interview with me uh right in the daily

00:23:09.880 telegraph just this week uh but this is referring to the fact that trump and rfk jr in the u.s

00:23:18.120 made kind of big announcements about autism about the causes of autism um but also about treatments

00:23:26.260 for autism um and you know you mentioned vaccines i think after i'd say 30 years of research

00:23:36.060 we now know that vaccines do not cause autism i'm saying that quite sort of strongly uh because there

00:23:43.200 has been a lot of research but you know trump is bringing it back into the discussion um personally

00:23:50.120 i think that's a bit of a backward step because there's been so much time and money spent on

00:23:56.520 research in many different countries in europe in the states in japan uh showing that autism is not

00:24:04.340 linked with this very specific vaccination the mmr vaccine even though it was proposed i think back in

00:24:12.160 1997 but here we are in you know 2025 i think we can say that that's not the cause but it doesn't

00:24:21.080 stop some people believing it um you are completely yeah yeah uh what about other environmental factors

00:24:29.180 is there any evidence of that so i think because i said that you know autism isn't isn't 100% genetic

00:24:35.320 it means that there is there is um you know some space for for environmental factors i've mentioned

00:24:42.640 hormones in the womb as one environmental factor uh that's the kind of uterine environment but there 0.99

00:24:50.340 might be other environmental factors and we we do need more research into those um but i suppose what i

00:24:57.340 would say is i would caution people from just suddenly announcing you know it's microplastics

00:25:03.820 or some you know it's pollution or you know because unless we've got strong evidence you can easily

00:25:10.480 cause anxiety in parents for example you know am i am i exposing my baby to the wrong environment you

00:25:17.920 know and uh the mmr vaccine was a good example of how a scientist rushed too quickly to make a big claim

00:25:26.280 about this vaccine causing autism based on quite a small sample and all the big data that's come

00:25:32.700 later has refuted it but it didn't stop a lot of people becoming very anxious about it

00:25:38.360 not vaccinating their kids against measles for example well i guess that it's kind of what i'm

00:25:44.620 driving out with my question is i suppose at the core of it for a lot of parents um you know i i know

00:25:51.340 that and i have autistic people in my family so i'm aware of that that it has many advantages

00:25:56.800 yeah on the other hand a lot of people might be wondering well is there anything i can do that

00:26:01.180 you know doesn't activate this predisposition in my children right but it sounds like we don't have any

00:26:06.840 kind of evidence either way on that is anything we can do right well i might sort of just go back

00:26:13.500 one step at the very assumption which trump and rfk junior are sort of bringing back into the

00:26:20.880 discussion of preventing autism because it kind of implicit in your question was should we be trying

00:26:27.040 to prevent autism some parents implicit in my question is some parents might want to prevent

00:26:32.600 yeah exactly yeah um and on our website you know we've thought deeply about this and on our website

00:26:38.600 we've we've put a statement of our values you know which is kind of unusual for scientists to sort

00:26:45.200 of get into the whole realm of values but we felt it was important to say we are you know we value

00:26:51.780 autistic people we don't want to prevent autistic people and prevention that word prevention kind of

00:26:58.700 takes us back to actually the holocaust and the world of eugenics you know where people with 0.88

00:27:06.700 disabilities were put into the concentration camps or were exterminated they were prevented

00:27:12.540 along with other minorities you know that was the the view back in the 1930s that we should prevent 1.00

00:27:18.880 disability rather than you know today we think of ableism you know this idea of that we shouldn't be

00:27:26.420 discriminating against people with disabilities we should be inclusive in our society because

00:27:32.300 disabilities are in you know they're very common we should be providing support for people with

00:27:37.560 disabilities and you could argue we should be providing treatment for for conditions or disabilities

00:27:45.160 that cause human suffering but autism you know by itself i don't think it causes human suffering i don't

00:27:52.760 think we should be trying to prevent it i'm not i'm certainly not suggesting that we should be trying to

00:27:57.700 prevent it and i i'd like to make it clear i do not want to put autistic people in camps and the reason 0.98

00:28:02.940 i'm asking you this is this is why the conversation about the range of the spectrum was kind of important

00:28:08.300 right because i don't think there are people who want their child to prevent their child from becoming

00:28:15.340 thomas edison or elon musk right but there are forms of autism or people who are autistic with a bunch of

00:28:21.100 other things yeah that really do suffer a lot and i have seen it with my own eyes yeah and so the reason

00:28:26.760 parents might be asking that question is they may want to help their children avoid that more extreme

00:28:33.860 version of autism that really does not only make the child suffer but everyone around them suffer

00:28:38.440 so it brings us back to the first question you asked which is what is autism right right and i was

00:28:44.220 struggling to give a concise answer but you know the reason i'm bringing it back is because i would say

00:28:50.440 autism in a pure sense uh involves you know the social communication difficulties the differences

00:28:58.760 we talked about with excellent attention to detail and so forth what you're referring to are more like

00:29:05.100 learning disabilities maybe language difficult like language delay and a lot of other things and

00:29:12.000 autism often co-occurs with these other things and treatments even prevention you know epilepsy for

00:29:20.500 example wouldn't it be great if we could prevent or treat epilepsy even though that's quite common

00:29:25.760 in autism yeah so it's all about sort of separating autism itself you know autism isn't defined by

00:29:32.120 epilepsy but it's what epilepsy is more common in autism so that could be a target for treatment or

00:29:38.620 prevention and it's just about being careful about you know what are we trying to treat or what are we

00:29:43.880 trying to prevent but but if autism clusters with all these things and if there's that more um more

00:29:52.940 disabling version of it yeah that's where some people might have questions about is there anything

00:29:58.560 environmentally that we can do yeah to avoid that yeah i think that's a fair question it is and you know

00:30:04.420 um amongst um treatment researchers we're just very careful to to really spell out what is it we're

00:30:12.280 trying to treat sure and so again another statement on our website under our values is we don't try to

00:30:19.140 treat or cure autism but but treatments might be very relevant for the co-occurring conditions that cause

00:30:26.620 distress like anxiety for example very very common in autistic people why should autistic people have to live 1.00

00:30:33.740 with anxiety so if we can find a treatment for that bit that would probably be welcomed

00:30:38.120 by autistic people and the way we check ourselves actually is not to think that we

00:30:44.700 researchers have got the answer to um what we should or shouldn't do we talk to the autism community

00:30:53.100 so we co-design studies with autistic people with parents with families uh to really check that the

00:31:01.060 research we're doing is actually in the interests of the autism community sorry if i'm being difficult

00:31:06.060 all i'm trying to get is let me let me put it in simple language if i can if i have a three-month-old

00:31:14.560 baby yeah and it's really you know if i don't want them to be severely affected by autism and all it has

00:31:22.800 all i have to do is not feed them carrots exactly then maybe that would be useful information irrespective

00:31:30.820 of you know our love and appreciation for and non-discrimination do you see what i'm getting

00:31:35.820 at i do i do um i mean i think you used the word severe and again you know we have to decide what is

00:31:43.300 severe and what isn't um if we're talking about say a learning disability uh it may maybe that is

00:31:51.420 something that we do need to kind of provide intervention for um so do we know any of that

00:31:57.620 do we know if there are environmental factors that are actually avoidable for parents before

00:32:02.560 with young children i don't think we're there yet i think i think the the u.s government has just

00:32:07.800 released a lot of money to investigate this and i think some some good science will come out of it

00:32:13.260 i think one of the challenges that comes with this debate and as somebody who's worked with autistic

00:32:17.560 kids i was teaching for over a decade right is again it comes back to i would argue trump's

00:32:23.300 imprecise use of language the term autism so as constantin said if somebody is very high functioning

00:32:30.140 like elon musk incredibly talented yeah i don't think most people would have a problem with that

00:32:34.660 well maybe democrats but we'll turn to one side but if like i used to some i used to work at the start

00:32:41.720 of my career with non-verbal autistics who essentially are going to have to be supported

00:32:47.200 for the rest of their life yeah i mean there's a footballer paul skulls his son is non-verbal

00:32:52.200 autistic and i saw an interview in which he i mean he's not the most emotional man but he was on the

00:32:56.400 point of tears where he said i worry about my son when i'm gone yeah because at the moment we're the

00:33:02.080 only ones who can look after him right and this is a man of great financial means most parents

00:33:07.100 don't have that yeah so i think that's really what we're talking about is the non-verbal

00:33:12.260 the autistic children that will never be able to live independently yeah yeah and we like to think 1.00

00:33:19.300 we live in a civilized society where people who may never live independently should that they they 1.00

00:33:27.020 should have the right to support to high quality support and the reason why that parent is probably

00:33:33.720 worrying is because the reality is that our society doesn't necessarily provide high quality

00:33:39.360 support either for those individuals who have very high support needs or even for autistic people

00:33:46.600 we we called it asperger syndrome earlier but autistic people who don't have a learning disability

00:33:52.100 but who might really struggle even with everyday tasks like getting the laundry done and going

00:33:58.240 shopping and cooking and looking after themselves you know uh you know so there's a real need for

00:34:04.660 better support services um yeah i think it's very common it's not just that one football player

00:34:11.980 a lot of a lot of parents kind of worry who's going to be looking after my my autistic son or daughter

00:34:17.940 when i'm not here so it's a real worry it is a real worry it's a real challenge because when i was

00:34:23.100 teaching i always felt a real pang of empathy for those kids because you'd see them on the playground

00:34:29.120 and they'd be at times isolated whilst other kids would be playing around them all because they weren't

00:34:35.320 as socially you know deft as the other children they would be you know made fun of you told this

00:34:42.140 horrible story about the child getting bullied yeah and so as a parent or as a teacher as an educational

00:34:48.340 professional it's it's that balance of realizing that the individual has to learn to fend for

00:34:53.700 themselves and they have to be prepared to enter the real world yeah but also yeah you want to

00:34:59.520 protect and support yeah i mean that's why again the first question what is autism i started off with

00:35:05.760 disability because autism does entail some disability it's not the full extent of autism but it's it's there

00:35:14.100 and if someone's got a disability then they have a right to safeguarding or to you know anyone with

00:35:20.320 a disability has vulnerabilities so we think of autistic people as vulnerable and that vulnerability

00:35:26.500 could be bullying you know a lot of schools say that they have a policy of you know zero tolerance

00:35:33.820 for bullying we know it goes on when the teachers are not you were a teacher yeah but when the teacher's

00:35:39.780 back is turned they'll be bullying or outside the school gates they'll be bullying and it's tragic

00:35:45.860 actually to kind of talk to autistic people and ask them what was your experience like back at school

00:35:51.240 and a lot of them give this account that they were bullied they were excluded

00:35:55.320 they were mocked they felt very isolated they weren't invited to other kids birthday parties or

00:36:02.800 you know and the result actually we need to talk about it is poor mental health that the majority of

00:36:10.740 autistic people are not only autistic but they end up becoming depressed anxious um just just feeling

00:36:19.880 quite lonely and isolated and some of our research now is focused on suicide prevention um you know

00:36:28.240 that we discovered through our research that one in three or one in four autistic people have planned

00:36:36.560 or attempted suicide you know it's incredibly high rate um you know and you know we published that work

00:36:45.780 in 2014 almost as a wake-up call to the government saying if you leave autistic people without the right

00:36:52.680 support whether it's kids at school or teenagers um or adults this is what happens you know i think

00:37:00.700 two-thirds of our in our study two-thirds of autistic people had felt suicidal but one in four had gone

00:37:07.120 even further to plan or attempt suicide so it's kind of um it's a sign that things aren't working for them

00:37:14.700 it's a sign that our society even though there's talk about neurodiversity and acceptance

00:37:20.320 and respect for difference um you know it's not it's not there yet we can we can go a lot further

00:37:27.000 and also i sometimes think the way that we frame autistic people they go well they're very low in

00:37:31.500 empathy you go they're not i've taught autistic kids they're not low in empathy yeah what they

00:37:35.400 struggle with is understanding people's emotions yeah so i think we also need to kind of reframe the way

00:37:41.140 we describe them because sometimes when i hear people describe autistic people i'm going this is someone

00:37:46.200 with autism they're not a sociopath yeah i'm glad you've mentioned that um because we've talked about

00:37:53.820 the kind of pattern recognition systemizing skills and we then did also touch on like the social

00:38:01.420 difficulties and underneath the social difficulties uh one thing that we've been looking at in our

00:38:08.320 research is the ability to imagine what someone else is thinking or feeling so that is one part of

00:38:15.340 empathy um in technical terms it's called cognitive empathy but being able to sort of read people's

00:38:22.740 faces uh interpret people's tone of voice or their body language kind of read between the lines in a

00:38:29.080 social situation to imagine what someone is thinking or feeling that's an area that autistic people

00:38:35.100 struggle with but there's another bit of empathy which is once you know that somebody else is feeling

00:38:42.060 something do you have a response an appropriate response to how they're feeling autistic that's

00:38:48.420 called affective empathy and autistic people seem to be absolutely fine at that so for example if an

00:38:54.920 autistic person hears that someone else is suffering it upsets them they're having their you know the

00:39:01.620 appropriate response and they want to rush over and help them you know so they're not psychopaths as

00:39:07.700 you say and in some of our work we've actually contrasted psychopaths who are also known as

00:39:14.800 antisocial personality disorder and autism almost like mirror opposites you know the psychopath is

00:39:22.240 very good at the cognitive empathy that's how they can manipulate their victims but they don't have

00:39:28.300 the affective empathy they don't have the appropriate emotional response they don't care about how the

00:39:33.560 victim is feeling and autistic people it's kind of the other way around that they have trouble reading 0.94

00:39:38.620 people so they don't tend to manipulate other people or deceive other people but once they know

00:39:44.940 if it's pointed out to them um you know how the other person is feeling they um they care about other

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00:41:09.440 like all of these conditions they present very differently in both male and female could you

00:41:17.420 talk a little bit about that because yeah again i remember we it's far easier to diagnose a boy

00:41:23.180 with autism than it is with a girl so let's talk about that a little bit yeah um so a number of

00:41:29.500 things to bring out um you're right that for the for the history of autism which goes back to the 30s or

00:41:37.720 40s um boys have been diagnosed more often as autistic uh so clinicians have got used to sort of

00:41:46.920 seeing boys in the clinic and they tend to be things like lining things up in patterns

00:41:52.660 um or um you know finding getting upset if things change in their routines it's a whole set of kind

00:42:02.180 of characteristics or symptoms that seem to kind of pick out someone who's an autistic boy and the

00:42:09.620 question is you know now that we're starting to be better at diagnosing autism in girls things are 1.00

00:42:15.660 changing more girls and women are seeking a diagnosis you know does autism look differently

00:42:21.880 in them um and you know you see the same sort of traits like an obsession or you know or a very

00:42:29.940 strong interest in a particular topic but with a boy it might be trains or vehicles with a girl it

00:42:36.900 might be reading reading literature you know where they read they're just immersed in the world of

00:42:41.920 books but they're doing it all the time you know so you still have this kind of laser focus but it's

00:42:48.740 it's showing differently in girls and boys um you know girls might become or women might become

00:42:55.300 more interested in um i don't know animals for example um not just their own pet but maybe lots of pets

00:43:04.360 uh or rescuing injured animals or you know but so they're kind of the the very strong interest is

00:43:10.800 there but it's coming out differently uh in an autistic girl compared to an autistic boy but it's

00:43:16.580 also as well because what part of as teaching autistic boys there's a certain you can see when there's a

00:43:22.460 frustration they act out you know the the probably the politically incorrect term is you know they

00:43:27.340 melt down or the you know they just they get so angry and frustrated yeah you don't see that with

00:43:33.380 girls because girls are far better at masking yeah absolutely and that seems to be a mixed blessing 1.00

00:43:39.960 because if you can mask that you're autistic that might mean that people you're included more

00:43:46.100 you know that um you know girls who are masking or it's sometimes called camouflaging 1.00

00:43:52.420 they might be sort of invited into social groups because they seem like everybody else

00:43:58.020 whereas for someone who's not masking they seem so different that perhaps they're excluded or

00:44:05.240 ostracized but the double-edged part of this is that by masking you're not really being yourself

00:44:11.980 you're kind of pretending that you're not autistic when you are so under the surface that person might

00:44:17.800 be feeling high levels of stress but on the surface they're acting like they're fine

00:44:22.700 and that could actually lead to poor mental health and you know interestingly we find very high rates

00:44:30.140 of poor mental health in girls and women who are autistic uh even higher suicide rates or suicide

00:44:36.940 attempts in autistic girls and women than autistic boys and men so so masking you know i i don't think i

00:44:47.800 would encourage people to mask you know i think it's really important that people should feel

00:44:51.700 comfortable being who they are and by masking in a sense we're almost sort of going along with this

00:44:59.000 idea that autism is something bad that you need to hide and we want to de-stigmatize autism well one of 0.79

00:45:06.060 the things about uh that is actually you know i feel that you know awareness is a term that's brought way

00:45:12.580 overused for lots of things but actually when it comes to autism um if you know autistic people one of

00:45:19.380 the things about them is they're actually fundamentally really really decent people yeah i there's a

00:45:25.760 kind of ass i call it aspy pureness which is they are maybe because for the reasons you gave them that 0.57

00:45:32.520 they struggle to read people's emotions therefore they can't manipulate but i don't think it would 0.95

00:45:36.240 occur to an autistic person to manipulate someone that is just not how they think generally in my

00:45:40.760 experience they're very principled they're moral people if there's some kind of moral panic going on

00:45:45.920 society the first people to say this doesn't compute literally will be autistic people because 0.83

00:45:52.060 they're like well this just isn't true i don't care about your feelings yeah and that's a really

00:45:55.860 important thing to have in society no i agree and i think if we have that awareness of the way that

00:46:02.060 autistic people are different and actually really good that will make it easier i think for people

00:46:07.160 to relate and to to make them included yeah um and that certainly has been my experience yeah you know

00:46:12.980 yeah so i think if you were an employer for example and you're thinking who should i employ

00:46:17.760 this autistic person or the non-autistic person i think what the autistic person brings is that 0.72

00:46:23.800 honesty you know they they like to know what is the job and they like it to be very well specified

00:46:29.980 it's not ambiguous in some way and then they can just get on with it and do it in a kind of

00:46:35.840 perfectionist way because of that attention to detail but they're not going to be sort of lying and

00:46:41.560 cheating and pretending that they're working or um you know getting into office gossip or you know

00:46:47.540 playing those sorts of mind games you know that is the refreshing part about having uh autistic people 1.00

00:46:53.760 in our community is that they are very honest and you're right that hand in hand with that is is

00:47:00.780 morality um you know they tend to tell the truth um you know they tend to expect others to tell the

00:47:07.700 truth and are a bit surprised you know the non-autistic world seems to be full of deception 0.84

00:47:14.640 and white lies or you know cheating that can also leave the autistic person quite vulnerable again

00:47:20.920 that you know many autistic people will report that in their lives they've been exploited or deceived by

00:47:28.860 others you know you were a teacher but you know i think i describe in the book an example of a child

00:47:34.920 where the other children in the playground say can i see your wallet and the autistic kid thinks okay 0.98

00:47:42.040 here's my wallet and they run off with it you know a non-autistic person would see the trap that

00:47:48.080 they're walking into and you know they'd be a bit more wary um and autistic people can be 0.99

00:47:54.400 manipulated and exploited and for that reason again we need to think about safeguarding well on the

00:48:01.740 point of employment it's actually something it's great because like i say you're the world's leading

00:48:05.860 research in this area we know that autistic people really struggle to find and maintain employment

00:48:12.500 yeah um and not just employment but from what i know also often struggle to run a business for

00:48:18.180 various reasons you know they they struggle in the world of work let's say yeah and i'm sure

00:48:22.480 a significant amount of that is to do with employers not understanding how to employ them properly

00:48:28.580 and they'll probably be part of that which is also to do with certain handicaps that they have

00:48:33.060 certain things that do hold them back but if you are um if you are to look at what the strengths

00:48:39.380 artistic people tend to have in general and how they might be used by employers and also the challenges

00:48:45.040 they face and how those might be compensated by someone who is an employer listening to this what

00:48:49.880 would be some of the tips and tricks that you'd give um well if i could start with the um

00:48:55.000 the fact that a lot of autistic people struggle to get into work that probably means that there's

00:49:02.540 even unconsciously there's a kind of discrimination going on so imagine you two are on the um the

00:49:09.700 hiring committee and i'm and i'm the candidate often traditionally we expect applicants for jobs to

00:49:16.460 make eye contact to have fluent communication skills uh to be a good team player you know all the

00:49:24.400 qualities that you might list in the job description they turn out to be a lot of the areas of

00:49:30.460 difficulty or disability so it's almost like saying we don't want this kind of disability in our 1.00

00:49:36.140 workplace so one implication is we need to change the way we hire people you know and there are some

00:49:43.360 companies who are now you know in order to be fair to autistic applicants for jobs they're they're

00:49:49.740 giving them tasks to do in the interview it's not about it's not the emphasis isn't on social skills

00:49:54.660 and communication but it might be on you know here's a problem can you solve it you know and autistic

00:50:00.900 people might be very good at that you know maybe that problem is related to the job that they're

00:50:06.140 applying for so that the employer can actually see their problem solving skills which often include

00:50:11.780 logic for example being you know very logical about things but i think you're sort of saying that

00:50:18.780 what what's the benefits of having an autistic person in the team and also what are the adjustments

00:50:24.820 employers can make because i i think there is some nuance to your point about you know eye contact and

00:50:30.840 all these other things because if you're hiring an it engineer yeah then shaking hands and looking

00:50:36.780 people in eye really doesn't matter exactly if you're hiring someone who's a salesperson actually

00:50:41.260 those skills do matter yeah and the fact that an autistic person finds those things more difficult 0.97

00:50:45.940 actually is disqualifying for that particular job yeah but if someone is very good at the core

00:50:51.460 the core element of their job what are some of the other things that might need to be worked around

00:50:55.820 so you know the message i would give to employers but also teachers going back to the educational

00:51:01.400 setting it's not just at work but it's in education is ask the autistic person what they need

00:51:07.380 it's a very simple thing you know because it's going to be different for each person

00:51:11.120 some autistic people might find the lights are too bright so you know they can't get on with their 1.00

00:51:17.060 job or their work because you know fluorescent lighting is aversive to them some autistic people

00:51:23.260 might say can i sit at the same desk every day because they need predictability and routine

00:51:28.800 and if you're in an open plan office maybe there's too much kind of background chatter

00:51:33.800 you know you know the autistic person might say can i wear headphones and you know noise cancelling 0.54

00:51:40.000 headphones whilst i'm doing my programming whatever so because a lot of autistic people 1.00

00:51:44.940 have sensory issues and even sort of and are very easily distracted and they just want to be able to

00:51:50.840 focus so a lot of these adjustments or accommodations are not expensive it's just about taking the time to ask the

00:51:58.560 person what do you need and companies or educational settings should be able to provide it i'm very

00:52:05.520 pleased that in my university in cambridge we now have 900 autistic students so that's a big change from

00:52:13.600 the old days it means that autistic students are applying to a top university they're getting in 0.99

00:52:20.480 and there's a disability resource center in the university who meets the student even before they start

00:52:26.940 just to say what do you need and that was a kind of a pathway that we put in place because if you make

00:52:34.180 things a bit more of a level playing field autistic people should be able to you know achieve just as

00:52:40.620 much as a non-autistic person or or better you know it's funny that you say that because i watched

00:52:45.700 this documentary about and i want to touch on the savant because okay that's you know a kind of a hack

00:52:52.720 trope shall we just say when people think of right man and whatever else but touching on what you said

00:52:58.200 i watched this documentary on a very talented uh mathematician he was a young boy he was 15

00:53:03.580 and you know the professor came around i think it was from cambridge actually i can't remember which

00:53:07.540 college and his dad went look to the professor i've got no doubt that the lad can do the work that

00:53:14.860 won't that'll be that'll be fine he goes i'm just worried that he'll be able to cope

00:53:18.520 at university being autistic and the professor smiled and went we're all autistic right you know

00:53:25.220 and i mean but there is like you've touched on before you know there is that kind of you know when

00:53:29.920 you go to you know the mathematics department in christ college cambridge for instance i'm sure it's

00:53:35.740 going to be having higher than your average percentage of autistic people there yeah uh you know

00:53:40.160 going back to one of the studies i mentioned earlier when we measure autistic traits amongst

00:53:46.120 mathematicians they do score higher than non-mathematicians so that's kind of um evidence

00:53:51.560 both that there's some sort of connection between mathematical ability maths is another system

00:53:57.440 and autistic traits but also means that you know if you go to work in a maths department

00:54:03.040 you know people don't think uh you're unusual if you're also autistic um you know if you if you're

00:54:11.820 not comfortable with eye contact or chit chat you know but you you're happy just being left to your

00:54:17.920 own devices solving maths problems um you know you're valued basically and so it comes back to this idea

00:54:25.720 that if somebody um you know can end up in a an environment in which they feel they belong

00:54:32.100 it's good for their mental health um you know it's good for their sense of inclusion

00:54:37.080 uh it's almost like their disability reduces and the person can just shine absolutely and let's talk

00:54:44.500 about the savant idea because you know we've all seen the movie rain man and that tends to be the

00:54:50.260 our image of people who yeah have you know see savant level power so let's talk about what does that mean

00:54:55.900 how common is it yeah etc yeah so savant um you know savant syndrome sometimes it's called

00:55:04.240 you know it's people who've got an unusual talent um that is out of keeping with the rest of their

00:55:10.960 abilities um so i've met and it's more common in autistic people than in the general population or

00:55:18.100 even amongst other disabilities so i've met autistic people who um who can just hear any song and they

00:55:25.960 can play it on the piano straight away so it's just kind of taking auditory information and turning it

00:55:32.380 into motor skills and they can just see the patterns you know that'd be one example um

00:55:39.600 there's a young man called derek parabaccini who is autistic he's got a learning disability as well

00:55:46.240 uh he doesn't live independently but he can he can listen to any jazz song and play it instantly

00:55:53.140 but if you then say can you transpose that song into a different key he can do that instantly

00:55:59.220 so he's taking the patterns he's obviously able to kind of recognize the algorithms if you like

00:56:05.500 and and do that transformation um or if you could say can you play that song in the style of you know

00:56:12.580 he can do that instantly but you know he wouldn't be able to go to the supermarket and get you know be

00:56:18.620 able to you know figure out if he's got the right change or not you know there's another autistic young 0.85

00:56:23.920 man called max park who is non minimally verbal um he is the world champion for the rubik cube

00:56:34.140 so the rubik cube is all about patterns but these are visual patterns unlike derek where it was auditory

00:56:41.600 patterns but you know he can solve the two the three by three rubik cube faster than anyone but also

00:56:48.740 the four by four the five by five there doesn't seem to be any limit to his ability to compute

00:56:54.280 what do i need to do to solve the the problem but you know he's not living independently he's still

00:57:01.940 very dependent on his parents he's now an adult still the world champion no one's beating him

00:57:06.800 you know so it's all about how do we support individuals like that you know and and channel

00:57:12.760 those skills and i mean look being the rubik world champion is great thing but also

00:57:16.960 is there perhaps a a more monetizable version of that skill that you know i'm sure there's other

00:57:22.280 patterns that that person can recognize right that's how you convert that uniqueness into a job

00:57:28.820 or into employment or into a business right yeah i know what you mean by monetizing it i think you

00:57:35.020 meant it in the positive of course of how can you help the person make a living and making a living

00:57:40.660 and an impact yeah i mean i suppose some autistic people might worry are our sort of strengths

00:57:46.640 going to be monetized in the sense of where are we going to be exploited so it's just you know um

00:57:52.940 uh yeah i mean i i take it in the first sense you know well if you monetize someone's skill you pay

00:58:00.420 them for that skill being used or they get the benefits of that right because you can't really

00:58:05.100 have one without the other in the sense of you can't say well autistic people are discriminated

00:58:09.840 against unemployment and then also recoil at the idea of monetizing the skill because that's what

00:58:14.560 employment is yeah right is that fair yeah yeah well i mean i guess the word monetize just has

00:58:20.080 these different connotations yeah but i think but i completely agree with you

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00:58:56.100 you've mentioned elon musk a few times and i sort of wonder because he came out on television as

00:59:04.000 autistic a few years ago um which i thought was a very positive thing because you know we need more

00:59:11.120 role models of highly successful people who were autistic um but actually when you look at elon musk

00:59:18.580 from a distance i don't know him personally is you know does he have a disability you know should we

00:59:25.340 really be using that word autism if he doesn't have any recognizable disability he seems to be coping

00:59:32.200 absolutely fine in the world he's monetized his skills in engineering you know um you know putting

00:59:39.060 rockets on mars and you know tesla cars so you know but obviously he identifies as having a lot of

00:59:47.840 autistic traits so i sort of see that this is good for raising awareness you know um but uh i would

00:59:55.260 still reserve the diagnosis for someone who needs extra support you know well we don't know what he

01:00:02.300 needs and we don't know the struggles i mean i've heard him talk about like you do not want to live in

01:00:06.240 my head as well and right so uh i don't we don't know him personally yeah um but yeah um i think

01:00:13.400 there was one other question as we're heading towards the end that i wanted to slight sidestep

01:00:18.340 but and don't don't feel like you're under any obligation to talk about it in detail but one of

01:00:23.160 the ways you conceptualize uh autism is is the extreme male mind is that accurate yeah um can you can

01:00:30.960 you before i ask you the question i really want to ask you can you explain that a little bit

01:00:34.440 yeah i mean it relates to what we've been talking about throughout throughout the conversation

01:00:38.600 because when you look at skills like systemizing or pattern recognition in the general population you

01:00:45.200 find gender differences that males on average are more interested in patterns and systems um taking

01:00:53.520 things apart putting them back together again um and girls and women on average have better social

01:01:00.940 skills and communication skills better empathy uh just much more comfortable in the world of

01:01:07.460 social groups and keeping track of who knows what and how everyone's feeling so you know if you then

01:01:14.480 look at autistic people they seem to be an extreme of the typical male profile because they've taken 1.00

01:01:21.480 the pattern recognition and systemizing to an extreme they haven't done it consciously that's just how

01:01:28.760 they work and they struggle with some of the things that are kind of um easier for for females in the 1.00

01:01:36.160 population so it's in that sense that i sometimes talk about autism as an extreme of the typical male

01:01:42.140 pattern of development and that's also why we started looking at these hormones that are sex linked

01:01:48.760 like testosterone and estrogen to understand the biology of these gender differences but also of autism

01:01:56.420 and in fact i've heard you talk about a study which kind of indicates that much of this gender

01:02:01.540 difference is visible in newborn babies you know the male baby reaching for mechanical toys the female

01:02:09.140 baby reaching for humanoid shapes and even with monkeys is that right monkey female monkeys yeah 1.00

01:02:14.260 monkeys are different in that respect yeah i mean i don't we haven't done the monkey work but we have

01:02:19.220 done the new we have done work with newborn babies right and it's not so much what do they reach for

01:02:24.820 because they can't really control their movements when they're at birth but they can control their eye

01:02:30.260 movements right so we present um newborn babies with a human face or um a mechanical object and just look

01:02:39.780 at which one do they look at and what we find is that boys at birth spend more time looking at the

01:02:47.060 the mechanical object and girls spend more time looking at the human face yeah so um it's not to sort of

01:02:54.420 diminish the role of social experience later and culture and socialization but it looks like some of these

01:03:01.620 gender differences might be present at birth and therefore partly biological so putting those two things

01:03:09.260 together here's the real reason i'm bringing this up as i'm sure you'll be aware yeah um gender dysphoria

01:03:15.780 and transgender issues have become quite prevalent as a talking point in the culture something we've

01:03:21.060 we've talked to lots of people in favor again you know all sorts of different sides on it on the show

01:03:25.940 yeah and when you talk about their effectively being on average not in every individual but on average a male

01:03:34.340 way of thinking and a female way of thinking or male brain and the female brain and particularly when it comes 1.00

01:03:39.860 we know that uh autistic girls are much more likely than the average girl to have a diagnosis of gender

01:03:47.220 dysphoria do you have any thoughts on the male brain and its interaction with gender identity as we now

01:03:54.660 call it and gender dysphoria and so on yeah i wasn't aware that um that girls and women are more likely to 1.00

01:04:01.860 have gender dysphoria autistic girls are more likely than an average girl to have gender dysphoria we know

01:04:11.540 that autistic people and girls in particular are very overrepresented in gender issues and that may also be

01:04:19.140 true for autistic males too could be so we did a big study of um 36 000 autistic people it was online

01:04:28.340 asking them about their gender identity so you know um do they does their current gender identity match

01:04:36.100 the gender that they were assigned at birth and we found autistic people were disproportionately more

01:04:43.620 likely to say that they're either non-binary gender non-binary so they don't feel either male or female

01:04:50.740 or trans so that they currently identify as the the opposite to the gender that they were assigned at birth

01:04:57.620 i think it was like six to nine times more likely so there is something there to do with if you're autistic

01:05:04.900 you're more likely to have um gender well i would say divergence let's call it uh not necessarily dysphoria

01:05:14.340 because we didn't ask are you unhappy with your you know with the gender that you've got or um but certainly

01:05:21.380 you're kind of you know not falling into just the binary categories and we don't know the reasons for

01:05:27.380 that you know you could imagine both social factors but also biological factors might contribute it needs

01:05:34.260 more work because i mean that is very true because i think one of the things that we kind of assume with

01:05:41.780 autism is that we know everything about it i don't know if simon i don't know if simon assumes that

01:05:48.660 but but in a lot of you know a lot of the autism is this it's this and it's the reality is is this is

01:05:54.660 an ongoing yeah conversation this is an ongoing study yeah you know the neurodiversity is something

01:06:01.380 that i really think is important to accept and yeah you know the fact that people are different we

01:06:06.900 think in different ways we see the world in different ways that is a good thing yeah um and so

01:06:12.580 i think i guess my question really goes is what do we not know yet about this condition

01:06:20.820 and that you hope with the but what are the breakthroughs that you hope we make in the next

01:06:24.180 few years right i mean i would say that autism has only been known about since the 30s or 40s you

01:06:30.980 know so um you know we're we're sort of i don't know 70 or 80 years into autism research that's a

01:06:38.500 relatively short amount of time in the history of science there's a lot more to still discover

01:06:43.940 and we work at multiple levels when i say we it's the whole community of autism researchers

01:06:50.020 some of it is neuroscience you know so now we've got the tools for brain imaging for example

01:06:56.260 um you know really understanding that diversity in the brain um which we don't have you know a full

01:07:03.220 picture of yet we talked about the genetics it's not really a sort of complete picture yet we're

01:07:08.340 still learning a lot um but i suppose much more relevant is what to what what can we be providing

01:07:16.340 for autistic people because there's it's all very well studying autism you know in terms of its causes

01:07:22.980 or its nature but much more relevant is you know are we providing what autistic people need

01:07:29.620 and as an example we're looking at music therapy to see whether that's something that autistic

01:07:35.300 people might benefit from anecdotally a lot of music therapists will say yes this works

01:07:41.860 you know we're doing a trial a randomized control trial to see if that works so i think we just need

01:07:46.580 a lot more kind of evidence about what works and for whom so that we get to a point in the future

01:07:53.380 where a parent's you know their child gets diagnosed and we can say no big deal there's all these

01:08:00.500 different options available all with evidence behind them uh you know to kind of match it to

01:08:07.060 you know each individual child and just touching on the parents because that's actually a very

01:08:12.260 important point what should a parent do if they're looking at their child and thinking to themselves

01:08:17.300 there's something a little bit awry here this they're not developing

01:08:21.140 yeah could they be autistic what are the classic signs and how should this person yeah go to get

01:08:28.580 help essentially get more support yeah um i mean it depends on the age of the child you know so we've

01:08:36.180 developed different screening instruments for toddlers uh where you'd look at for certain behaviors like

01:08:43.540 whether the child is pointing at things or not because that's a even before they can talk it's a

01:08:48.180 communicative gesture whether they're looking at the face and following where people are looking

01:08:53.860 so they're kind of screening instruments that look at that but there are screening instruments right

01:08:58.980 through childhood and teens and adolescents so um the one that we've developed is called the aq the

01:09:05.940 autism spectrum quotient parents can find it online they could even if they're sort of being told by their

01:09:14.020 doctor by their gp or family physician your child's fine stop worrying they could go online and start

01:09:20.900 filling in one of these checklists and if the child is if the person is scoring high uh they could go back

01:09:27.540 to the doctor and it kind of empowers them to say look at my child's score i want my my child to be

01:09:33.940 given a full assessment but you know again talking about how our society is still not providing what

01:09:41.380 people need the waiting lists to get a diagnosis are shockingly long you know um we hear around

01:09:50.100 different parts of the uk but the same across the world that waiting lists can be not just months but

01:09:56.740 years long just to get the diagnosis and then when you get the diagnosis there may be nothing beyond

01:10:03.300 that no no pathway no support services so um you know that's down to the government i think in

01:10:12.020 countries that have you know um socialized social care and health services um but there are the funding

01:10:21.300 is is not sufficient at the moment oh one other question i was going to ask you just following the logic of a

01:10:27.060 a number of the things you said so you mentioned that it's significantly genetic at the very least

01:10:32.340 we don't know how much and to what extent and which environmental factors affect it

01:10:38.260 and then we also know that autism rates as we've acknowledged are rising very rapidly and have risen

01:10:43.300 very rapidly logically if it's mostly genetic and that's happened you would say that's because of

01:10:49.860 better diagnosis is that the only reason that we're now seeing so many more autistic people

01:10:55.780 uh it's one of the reasons a better diagnosis and greater awareness so you know podcasts and

01:11:01.780 interviews like this is kind of hopefully is educated we've made a thousand autistic people

01:11:06.820 in this conversation well it's certainly you know you know there will there will be people out there who

01:11:11.460 are thinking of course could i be autistic or could could my son or my brother or whatever of course

01:11:17.220 and that's a good thing you know because it's kind of raising awareness another factor is uh we've

01:11:22.420 broadened the definition of autism so to to include not just autistic people with learning disability or

01:11:30.420 intellectual disability which is what it used to be but also autistic people without learning disability

01:11:37.060 so that suddenly opens up the diagnosis to anyone in the population um and then there's also obvious

01:11:43.460 things like social media you know that there are autistic people going online and talking about their

01:11:48.740 experiences and you know that that also spreads the word and you know there are more clinics on the

01:11:55.620 ground so we've trained more professionals to be looking for it all of these factors kind of combine to

01:12:02.500 increase the numbers and i think since the year 2000 there's been a 700 increase in the numbers of people getting diagnosed so

01:12:12.180 back then it was like one in a thousand today it's one in 30. so it's really skyrocketed but i think

01:12:20.900 that's a good thing because it probably meant that there were lots of people who were just sort of coping

01:12:27.620 muddling along without a diagnosis who actually needed it and if they got their diagnosis early enough

01:12:33.700 it might have prevented the deterioration in their mental health um and that sense of isolation we've

01:12:40.740 talked about absolutely and something i've seen as i say with my family dr simon vancone it's such a

01:12:46.660 pleasure having you on thank you for being here thank you uh before we head over to questions from

01:12:50.980 our supporters the last question we always ask is what's the one thing we're not talking about that

01:12:55.140 we really should be and that could be related to autism or not at all totally yeah your call um

01:12:59.460 um well um back in 2017 i was invited to give a a lecture at the united nations on autism awareness day

01:13:12.340 and i thought goodness i've got this opportunity um so i chose as my topic autism and human rights

01:13:21.060 and although it's a bit you know it's now you know um eight years later i'd still don't think we're

01:13:27.940 talking about that enough the autistic people are they're falling outside of human rights we've 1.00

01:13:34.500 talked about the right to employment and the right to education there's also the right to health

01:13:40.740 including mental health the right to leisure and dignity you know all of the different human rights

01:13:47.060 that exist uh many autistic people are not enjoying unlike the rest of us so i think that's something 1.00

01:13:54.340 that we could we could look into more well thank you very much head on over to triggerpod.co.uk

01:13:59.620 where we ask the good doctor your questions how do autism traits and diagnosis vary across different

01:14:07.700 ethnic and ethnic and cultural groups and is there a cultural and background dimension to autism

01:14:25.540 you

01:14:37.700 getting ready for a game means being ready for anything like packing a spare stick i like to be

01:14:48.420 prepared that's why i remember 988 canada suicide crisis helpline it's good to know just in case anyone

01:14:55.700 can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder anytime 988 suicide crisis helpline

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01:15:11.940 you

TRIGGERnometry - October 08, 2025

The World's Leading Autism Expert - Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen

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