Uta Frith

Dame Uta Frith (née Aurnhammer; born 25 May 1941) is a German-British developmental psychologist at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. She has pioneered much of the current research into autism and dyslexia. She has written several books on these subjects, arguing for autism to be seen as a mental condition rather than as one caused by parenting. Her Autism: Explaining the Enigma introduces the cognitive neuroscience of autism. She is credited with creating the Sally–Anne test along with fellow scientists Alan Leslie and Simon Baron-Cohen. She also pioneered the work on child dyslexia. Among students she has mentored are Tony Attwood, Maggie Snowling, Simon Baron-Cohen and Francesca Happé. Frith was born Uta Aurnhammer in Rockenhausen, a small village in the hills between Luxembourg and Mannheim in Germany. She attended the Saarland University in Saarbrücken with her initial plan for her education in art history, but changed to experimental psychology after learning of its empirical nature. She was inspired by the work of many psychologists and psychoanalysts, such as Hans Eysenck, and decided to train in clinical psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. While at the Institute she worked closely with Jack Rachman. She went on to complete her Doctor of Philosophy, on pattern detection in neurotypical and autistic children, in 1968. She was mentored, during her early career, by Neil O'Connor and Beate Hermelin and has described them as pioneers in the field of autism. Frith's research paved the way for a theory of mind deficit in autism. While she was a member of the Cognitive Development Unit (CDU) in London, in 1985 she published with Alan M. Leslie and Simon Baron-Cohen the article "Does the autistic child have a 'theory of mind'?", which proposed that people with autism have specific difficulties understanding other people's beliefs and desires. Frith, along with Alan Leslie and Simon Baron-Cohen, created two theories of autism.