Alan M. Leslie

Alan M. Leslie is a Scottish psychologist and a professor of cognitive psychology at Rutgers University.

Education
Leslie completed his undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh and his Ph.D from the University of Oxford in 1979/80.

Academic career
For a number of years he was a Medical Research Council Senior Scientist at the University of London. He joined the faculty at Rutgers University in 1993. He has also worked as a visiting professor at the Universidad Autonoma in Madrid, Spain, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Research
Leslie was a member of the team in London who, in 1985, discovered the ‘theory of mind’ impairment in autism. Autism manifests as the inability to communicate with others, and an obsession with a restricted repertoire of activities. In 1985 Alan Leslie along with Simon Baron-Cohen and Uta Frith published an article called 'Does the autistic child have a 'theory of mind'?' in which it was suggested that children with autism have particular difficulties with tasks requiring the child to understand another person's beliefs.

He is interested in the design of the cognitive system early in development.