DART is simply named after a list of keywords. The research we do all links to one or more of these keywords:
Development / Autism / Research / Technology
Some DART people (the pony is not a permanent member of DART)
You might notice that our projects now are organised into four topic areas which don’t map on to the original DART keywords – namely: Technology, Bilingualism, Neurodiversity and Children & Learning. We probably ought to change our name but TBNCL just isn’t as catchy, so we’re sticking with DART. After all, those original tags still apply, we’ve really just added some more…
DART members include researchers from undergraduate to post-doctoral level. The group was founded by Sue Fletcher-Watson and she supervises a lot of the projects.
Our work aims to apply methods from psychology to questions with educational, clinical and societal impact. Our general objective is to understand neurotypical and neurodivergent forms of development and life experiences, with a specific focus on autism and on the consequences of being born early.
We endorse a neurodiversity model in all of our projects, in which we recognise the disabling effects of a normative environment which is tailored to the needs of a (broadly) neurotypical majority. A large part of our work aims to discover how we can more clearly describe neurodiversity (in psychological terms) and use that knowledge to inform the development of new practices in schools and clinics, and new understanding in our society at large. We hope this will support neurodivergent people, and our whole community, to live and thrive together.
Specific projects are found in the Active Projects menu, and we have a searchable Library of all our findings including guides for general readers, filmed presentations and press coverage.
You can read our Privacy Statement here and download our DART Accessibility statement here.