Dr Kate Plaisted

Principal Researcher

Kate received a BSc in Psychology in 1991 from the Department of Psychology, University College London, and became a post-graduate student at King's College. She was awarded a PhD from the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge in 1994 and was awarded the New Investigator Award by the American Psychological Society for the research conducted for her PhD. After a Research Fellowship at St John's College, she took up her lectureship at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge in 1998.

Her research interest in autism was sparked by the fascinating cognitive strengths shown by many individuals with autism. These include exceptional abilities to process fine details, better discrimination abilities compared to typical individuals and an ability to show highly focussed attention. An important question is whether these cognitive strengths provide the key to understanding some of the difficulties for individuals with autism, such as theory of mind and aspects of linguistic processing. More specifically, it raises the question of whether the differences in psychological mechanisms which result in exceptional abilities play a causal role in affecting the development of social information processing and language in autism. However, this question can only be tackled by first understanding the mechanisms which cause the cognitive strengths. Kate's research interests therefore focus on mechanisms of perception and attention that may be different in autism compared to typical individuals.

Kate is a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, where she is Director of Studies in Experimental Psychology and Evolution and Behaviour. She is also Associate Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. She is currently funded by a Career Establishment Award from the MRC.