"You know how a dog can be very angry one minute and the next minute it's wagging its tail? That's how my emotions are," Grandin said. "I've made my life intellectually complex, but not emotionally complex."

Jennifer C. Kuhn '01, a cognitive neuroscience concentrator who introduced the speaker, said that Grandin's experiences are significant because she turned a weakness into a strength.

"She capitalizes on her disability by

using her unusual skills," Kuhn said. "Temple Grandin is at the forefront of understanding autistic thought."

Grandin said that her autism has not harmed her career, but that she has encountered sexism along the way.

As an example, she cited a time when, as an undergraduate at Franklin Pierce University, she spoke with former Harvard Professor of Psychology B. F. Skinner in William James Hall.

"I went up to his office. He starts touching my leg. I said, 'You may look at them, but you may not touch them,'" she said.

Members of the audience--which included many psychologists and parents of autistic children--said they appreciated Grandin's personal account of autism.