Thursday 31 January 2013 at 6.30

The Old Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Sixth Floor, King's Building, Strand Campus, King's College London

What do autistic spectrum disorders tell us about typical psychological development? Francesca Happé, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry (King's College London) famously devised the Strange Stories test in which she established that people with ASD had difficulty making sense of ambiguity, and of understanding that people don't always say what they mean. In her current work, a sample of which is filmed for this discussion, she has devised simple animations which test 'mind-reading' in children with autism, conduct disorders and typical development. In this discussion novelist Kathy Lette, author of The Boy Who Fell to Earth explores the autistic and the 'normal' mind with Francesca Happé and pioneering psychiatrist Sir Michael Rutter. Neil Vickers, of the King's Centre for the Humanities and Health, who has written on Coleridge and the Doctors, chairs.