Alan Leslie

Alan Leslie is a Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, where he directs the Cognitive Development Laboratory. A Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor Leslie investigates the developmental neurocognitive mechanisms and domain-specialized learning involved in abstract ideation emerging early in life such as cause and effect, enduring object, one, two, three, social agent, believing, pretending, desiring, purpose, and moral transgression. One of the principal authors of the research that discovered the ‘theory of mind’ impairment in autism, he also continues to study children with autistic spectrum disorder.