Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D., delivers the keynote address at the 7th Annual Promising Pathways Conference addressing autism spectrum disorders April 12 at Florida Gulf Coast University. Grinker, who is a professor at George Washington University, authored the book “Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism.”

His own daughter was diagnosed with autism at 2 years old in 1994. At that time autism was believed to occur in about one in every 10,000 children compared to today when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's Autism and Disabilities Monitoring Network estimates that about one in every 68 children is diagnosed with autism. WGCU’s John Davis spoke with Grinker about why autism seems so much more prevalent today and about what he’s discovered studying autism across cultures through the lens of an anthropologist.