Professor Catherine Lord

Oh, dear.

Well, with other people, not single-handedly by any means, I work to develop the most commonly used diagnostic instruments that people use when they diagnose autism.

That's where that came from.

I mean, I think in the 60s, a person with autism...

would often be not verbal, like not talking, and would be quite severely intellectually disabled.

We were very focused on things like flapping your hands and looking at your fingers and the things that you can see right away.

Oh, I saw this little boy who had all kinds of language that just poured out of him.

And in those days, we had them—parents—

sit in another room and watch us and so he was not happy about that at all he was about four and he had a lot of repetitive language and his nose was running and he started talking about i don't want to be a rainbow i don't want to be a reindeer

I don't want to be a reindeer running reindeer.

I don't want to be a reindeer.

And what he was talking about was he was crying and his nose was running and he had these phrases and he was trying to figure out how to say, you're making me cry.

And people were like, boy, I don't know if he could be autistic.

And he was as autistic as you could be.

So getting very focused on something

You know, that could be anything.

I mean, it could be the same things other kids are interested in.

So, you know, dinosaurs.

But it also could be Scottish clans.

Or we had somebody who loved newspaper editors.