| Citation | Uta Frith established a cognitive neuropsychological approach to developmental disorders, which overturned previously held concepts of autism and dyslexia as social-emotional problems. The teams led by her succeeded in identifying specific cognitive deficits in autism and dyslexia and discovering their neurophysiological basis. Frith initiated, tested and developed the two prevailing accounts of autism, "lack of theory of mind" and "weak central coherence". Her team was also the first to show that the identical phonological deficit, manifest in behaviour as well as in abnormal neural activity, underlies dyslexia in different European languages, while the severity of the reading difficulty is influenced by cultural factors. |