Development of cognitive empathy in children with neurological disorders

Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. It may contain errors, so check it against the video before quoting.

Okay. So, I'm really honoured to be asked to speak at the RCPCH conference today. I think it's a very important meeting, and particularly given these days where parents face such challenge in knowing how to make healthy choices and make the right decisions. So it's great to be at this meeting and today I'll be speaking about a large study we recently did looking at the development of cognitive empathy, looking at the development across the lifespan and changes across the lifespan.

And empathy is obviously a very important human ability. It helps us to navigate the challenges of other people and social environments, and without empathy the world could be quite confusing in terms of making sense of other people's behaviour and their intentions.

So as well as looking at the development of these abilities over time, I'll also be considering the needs of children with neurological disorders, where they may have extra challenges in developing mature cognitive empathy, and the problems that can cause, and also issues around neurodiversity for people who might have subtle changes or differences in how they might perceive other people and use empathy. So it's a broad topic, but we'll be using the latest data to think about how we frame our understanding of empathy at different points across the life cycle.