Welcome to the DART blog. I’m Sue Fletcher-Watson, I’m running the DART site and much of the research featured on these pages. The goal of this blog is to provide an insight into the nature of research in psychology, and other similar disciplines.
General ranting
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I was disappointed recently at a meeting that focused on freedom of speech and the related concept of academic freedom. In my opinion (and after all, that’s what this blog is largely for!) the current vogue for conversations about academic freedom is, at best, the most colossal waste of time and energy, and at worst,…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of “strengths”, and the way we define them, in relation to neurodiversity. There are a few ways in which I think strengths are referenced, by people using the language of neurodiversity to talk about differences between people. First, there are approaches that remind us to see…
Last year I read seven PhD Thesisiseeses (well, you tell me the plural of thesis!). Yes, that is too many to read in one year, no, I did not plan it that way. The task was made far more manageable by the fact that each student understood the need to support their thesis reader through…
Recently on twitter I made the absolutely terrible mistake of claiming that I am good at time management. I am totally infuritated by the running gag that academics are busy because they are very bad at organising their time – in my view, the reason we are busy is because we have too much to…
I’d say about once a fortnight I get an email from someone who wants to get into research in some way. They might have a good idea that they think would make a nice research project. They might specifically want to become a researcher themselves. They might be working on something that could do with…
At the start of this month, I set myself the challenge to write a blog every working day – 22 June blogs. In reality I managed 14, plus a couple of days where I edited existing blogs instead of writing new ones. I’m pretty chuffed with that. Importantly, the exercise has proven to me that…
The last couple of days I didn’t manage to write a June Blog at all. The reason being that I was close to submitting a grant and perfecting the argument for that took up all my mental space for writing. I was reflecting on whether there was anything useful I could exratct from the process…
A common theme on this blog is an attempt to provide guidance on the things that, as academics, we are meant to know how to do, but on which we rarely receive any explicit training. For today’s June Blog I thought I’d write one of these posts, about designing a small research project. As people…
For today’s June Blog I thought I would share a few reflections on the research process, based on my attempts to indoctrinate / introduce my children to scientific research. We’ve done a few scientific projects over the past few weeks but the one I thought I would talk about is my nine-year-old’s most recent research…
Since publishing this blog two days ago there has been a very large response on twitter with a lot of autistic people kindly taking the time to feed back on the content. A lot of this has been very positive and all of it has been fascinating, but some people have also fed back to…
It’s episode nine of my June Blogs and this time I want to write a companion piece to the last post, which was about how to start a project. Like a lot of stuff I post on here, I’m not talking so much here about the intellectual process, but more the pragmatic decisions and steps…
Attentive followers (do I have any of those?) may have noticed I didn’t post a June Blog yesterday so today I’m aiming for a double bill to get back on track^. These are going to be checklists for starting, and ending projects. I’ve got a record, I’m afraid, of sharing my student supervision thoughts in…
For today’s June Blog – the 8th so far – I wanted to write about something that I think is often quite hard for students writing up a final project dissertation or thesis. It also seems especially relevant now, in the midst of dramatic changes to research plans dsrupted by Covid-19. Namely… …is it ok…
I didn’t have time to do a blog post today. I was busy making this instead, for my child’s 11th birthday. Sometimes, family comes first.
Episode 6 in the June Blogs series aims to cast some light onto one mysterious aspect of academic publishing – the role of the editor. About a year ago I was approached by the editors of Autism: International Journal of Research and Practice to see if I would like to become an action editor for…
Blog number 5 in the June Blog series… Last year – by which I mean, from May 2019 – April 2020 inclusive, I tried to say No. I’ve talked before about how successful that was. The patterns in this interim blog post largely were sustained to the end of the Year of No, though of…
WARNING: this blog post is immensely self-indulgent. This is the fourth post in my June Blogs series, and the first one I’ve had to write under real time pressure. I’ve got half an hour to get this written, posted, tweeted and also make some edit’s to yesterday’s post on Neurodivergence and Neurodiversity. Coincidentally, this…
The language of neurodiversity has now been with us for some time. Judy Singer coined the word “neurodiversity” more than two decades ago, and Kassiane Asasumasu (formerly Kassiane Sibley) gave us the term “neurodivergent”º. However, the language of neurodiversity is still not being used in a standard way, neither in the community, nor in practice,…
I’ve been planning this blog post for the last few days and I confess I feel uncomfortable about it. It feels inappropriate for me, someone who has indupitably benefitted from the racism baked in to the system, to speak up against it. I’m nervous that this post will make someone else’s trauma all about me…
Good Morning. Since writing this blog nine days ago, there has been an explosion in policy brutality in the USA, an expression of both systemic, structural and particular, individual racism. The Black Lives Matter movement is at the forefront of opposing this. In an effort to contribute helpfully to this movement my first “proper” blog…
It’s been about nine months since my Year of No started, in May 2019, and I thought it was time to review progress. In fact, my intention had been to review progress at the half-way point – around November 2019. The fact that this blog is coming three months behind schedule probably tells you a…
Today we have a guest blog from our visiting PhD student, Jackie Ryan. I recently had the pleasure of a four-month study term at the DART from September to December 2019. I am an autistic PhD student from the University of Alberta, Edmonton. I am studying Rehabilitation Science (a field that includes occupational therapy, speech…
Today we have a guest blog from visiting PhD student, Jackie Ryan. Recently I tweeted about a project that I am excited to be working on with Sue Fletcher-Watson in the DART lab. I have been on twitter for 10 years, but with a very quiet presence, mainly retweeting interesting posts. Of course, I mentioned…
This is going to be a blog post about saying no. Recently I had the extreme good fortune to be selected for a training course in Strategic Research Leadership, being delivered by 64 Million Artists and wisely commissioned by my employer, University of Edinburgh. Of course, I didn’t think it was good fortune at the…
Righti-oh, here we go with Part Two of my blog responding to some of the themes from the 2019 meeting of the International Society for Autism Research. Part One was all about Inclusion at the conference – specifically about the inclusion of autistic people – and this one is going to be about Interdisciplinarity. In…
Here we are in early May and it’s time again for my annual blog responding to some of the themes I saw at the International Meeting for Autism Research, which this year took place in Montréal, Canada. Shortly before the meeting, the autism-specific news outlet Spectrum (funded by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative) published…
At a couple of events in the near future, my colleague Natalie Jenkins and I will be speaking about supporting autistic people studying and working in Universities. Our qualifications for this? Natalie is an autistic person studying and working in a University. And I am her mentor. Natalie is brilliant at her job, but sometimes…
Last week we welcomed a final year high school student, interested in a career in psychology, to spend a week with our team. Here’s what he thought of the experience: I recently got the opportunity to get some work experience with Sue, and so for the past week I have been in Kennedy Tower working…
Today we have a guest blog from Janet Parsons from the BASIS team at Birkbeck, University of London. This reports on their recent annual scientific meeting at which I was delighted to present on some of our work from the Theirworld Edinburgh Birth Cohort. The BASIS Scientific meeting 2018: Early motor differences in autism and…
On Friday afternoon (in retrospect a foolish decision – never post anything controversial on twitter just before the weekend) I posted a series of tweets sharing this new project page. The project is a multi-site fully-powered clinical trial of a new manualised intervention for parents of autistic children. Let’s break that down a bit. Multi-site…
This is the latest in the blog series co-authored by myself and the extraordinary Duncan Astle. After a brief hiatus we are back with our latest post – how to put together a great poster. Designing an attractive and informative poster is an incredibly useful skill, especially for early-career researchers. For any non-academic readers –…
Neurodiversity is a somewhat fraught term – for some associated with a specific socio-political movement, for others a more neutral descriptor. One source of conflict between those who explicitly adopt and endorse a neurodiversity framework and those who reject it is the perception that neurodiversity is incompatible with provision of support. This is important for…
It’s been a wee while since I had a good autism-related rant on here, but my usual trip to the annual conference of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR – formerly this meeting was called IMFAR) provides an opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, there was lots to love at this year’s INSAR. Work which…
Rather than attempt a single blog covering all aspects of grant-writing, Duncan Astle and I are continuing our blog series of advice to newly-fledged researchers by focusing on the challenges of costing a new grant. Costing a grant means working out exactly where money will be spent, and being realistic about what it is going…
On 22nd December 2017, Spectrum published an article with the headline: “Partnerships with people on the spectrum yield rich research insights.” We had agreed to be interviewed for this article. We felt it was an opportunity to inform Spectrum’s readers about the scope and importance of the roles autistic people may play in autism research.…
The exceptional Duncan Astle and I continue our intermittent blog series on academic life today, this time focusing on the stressful post-PhD employment scene. There are a number of options for those who want to stay in academia post-PhD, all highly competitive and with unique stressors. Today, we’re talking about one of the most common…
A short message to wish you all a fantastic holiday season. Whatever you are up to, we hope you are feeling well and happy, and looking forward to what 2018 holds. Thank you, as ever, for all you’ve done to support the growing DART team in the last year. It is MUCH appreciated.
This is the latest in a semi-regular (trying to be regular) blog series, with the inestimable Duncan Astle. The practical skills of being a good scientist are rarely taught but are vital. This is the subject for our series of blogs, (tagged on the DART pages with Insight Into Research) and this time we are…
Myself and Duncan Astle (he of the substantial intellect and even more substantial quiff) have been putting our minds to a series of blog posts, attempting to help the fledgling academic get to grips with some of their new professional duties. This week it is a real classic – how to supervise a PhD student.…
This blog post was written by three of my students, Bérengère, Kirsty, and Maggi, who have all recently completed surveys as part of their research projects. All in, they managed to accumulate more than 600 participants, which is absolutely fantastic! As an extra thank you and to acknowledge and reflect on our work within the…
This is my second post written with Duncan Astle, a colleague of exceptional integrity and thoughtfulness, ideally qualified for this particular piece. It is a follow-up to our previous joint post about peer-review. We now turn our attention to the response to reviewers. As with the role of reviewer, junior scientists submitting their work as authors are…
I’m back in the office after my usual annual pilgimage to the International Meeting for Autism Research (aka IMFAR) which took place this year in San Francisco. As usual, it was inspiring to be among so many researchers and, increasingly, autistic people (including autistic researchers, of course) gathered together to share their work. The quality of debate…
This month’s blog is written by me with Duncan Astle, a colleague whose intellectual brilliance is only exceeded by his charm. Peer review is a lynch-pin of the scientific process and bookends every scientific project. But despite the crucial importance of the peer review process in determining what research gets funded and published, in our experience PhD students and…
Recently I have received feedback from a number of sources suggesting that I need to be careful when listening to autistic people, and integrating their perspectives into my research agenda. The implication is often that I would be better off if I didn’t talk to autistic people quite as much as I do. This has…
Back in 2014 I wrote this blog post about managing your supervisor. The post was a way to consolidate some thoughts about my preferred supervision style. Since then I have shared the link with every new student who comes to work with me and it has been hugely useful. Now, three years on, and with a lot…
Increasingly, as awareness of autism and constructs such as “the autism spectrum” grows, one hears people casually describing their acquaintances with phrases such as “she’s a bit spectrum-y” or “he’s a little autistic“. Being perfectly honest, I have used such phrases myself. I guess I’ve found it a helpful and succinct way to describe a…
This is a guest blog from DART collaborator Noreen Murphy. You can find out more about Noreen’s project on AAC support and autism at this page. Technology continues to develop at a pace that shows no sign of slowing anytime soon. The field of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for children on the autism spectrum is no exception.…
On Christmas Day this year, multiple clinicians and academics wrote to The Guardian newspaper to express their concern about the impact of ‘screentime’ on children’s health. In this post, we will extract key phrases from the letter, which can be seen in its entirety here, and explore whether the evidence upholds the statement. In this, I am joined by…
The other day I tweeted, having just had my first mentoring meeting with Kabie. I am an academic, a psychologist, about eight years out from my PhD. Kabie is an autistic advocate, and campaigner. We are both mothers, Scottish residents, and care deeply about getting a better deal for autistic people (and using research to help…
In a new(ish) paper (first published a year ago), Lorcan Kenny of the Centre for Research in Autism and Education asks “Which terms should be used to describe autism?“. The paper provides a much-needed empirical analysis of this question which has beset the autism community for years. Conflict over the appropriate terminology to describe both autism itself and specific…
This guest blog comes from the keyboard of Felicity Sedgewick, a PhD student at UCL Institute of Education, based at CRAE (Centre for Research in Autism and Education). I invited Felicity to write the post after supporting her recruitment of participants by sharing her study website on twitter. This sparked a debate which extends beyond her specific research topic…
This is the third part in a mini-series of blog posts all aiming to address the big concerns that parents and practitioners tend to have about children using technology. The themes were derived from a series of discussions, but particularly a pair of workshops on technology and autism held in February 2016 as part of Innovative…
Health Warning: this blog is about to get political. Reading this post requires you to endorse two statements which I will not address with evidence, but instead take as a priori assumptions. Expert advice, based on empirical evidence and data-based forecasts, was overwhelmingly in support of voting to remain in the EU Therefore the public’s…
So here’s the second in a series of blog posts which I’m aiming to write over a fairly condensed period of time, all drawing on recent discussions which were particularly crystallised by a pair of workshops as part of Innovative Learning Week 2016. All the posts are aiming to provide an evidence-based response to current concerns…
In February 2016, together with my colleague Alyssa Alcorn, I held a couple of workshops at the University of Edinburgh as part of the annual Innovative Learning Week. The theme of ILW2016 was ‘Ideas in Play’. So we decided so gather a bunch of people interested in technology and autism, give them some iPads and apps, and get…
This is just a note to introduce a guest post from a colleague looking for participants for her research. Please read and share with your networks. Thanks! During our childhood we learn to recognise the emotions we feel. As babies, we begin to learn basic emotions such as happiness through our carer’s facial and vocal…
A week ago I returned from spending a few days in the USA attending the International Meeting for Autism Research – an annual academic conference, which took place in Baltimore this year. IMFAR, as it is known, is one the highlights of my year. An opportunity to get together with researchers from all disciplines who share a…
This is another one of my posts inspired by a debate on twitter. In this case the interaction which sums it all up is: @mdreddy6 I'm sure I could dig some up, but as I said there is reason anyone should have to prove that their communication is their own. — Gregg Beratan (@GreggBeratan) March…
The Family in Residence project is an attempt to bring a real community prtnership into the Patrick Wild Centre. We are working with the McDonald family (Gillian & Craig, and their twin sons, Matthew & Stuart) over a twelve month period, getting their input as a family affected by Fragile X syndrome, into everything we do. My personal…
In September 2015 I was gearing up to write the toughest grant application I’d ever written as principal investigator (toughest = most money, longest application form, lowest average rate of success). Wanting to put my money where my mouth is, regarding the need for meaningful community engagement at all stages of research, I had the…
A couple of days ago I showed my husband, Ben Fletcher-Watson, a researcher with a humanities background, a tweet which I thought was hilarious. His reaction surprised me and led to a long discussion at the kitchen table, which in turn became the inspiration for this guest blog on the continued gulf between science and the…
I was recently delighted to have the report of our randomised controlled trial of an iPad app published in a fantastic journal, Autism. The paper came out in October 2015 and, since the trial itself ended in June 2013, you’d be forgiven for wondering what on earth took us so long. Sorting out the data Well, of course after the…
…from everyone at DART! We’ve had a wonderful year, but it’s been mega-busy! I plan to be doing a major overhaul of the site in the new year and I’ll be posting then to let you all know about the changes and updated info. Watch this space for simple downloadable fact sheets on using technology…
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed a downturn in the frequency of my posts over the past few months. The main reason for this is that I have been utterly consumed by writing an application to a large funding scheme. I asked you for support with that proposal in this recent post and was overwhelmed by the generosity of…
As regular readers of this blog will know, I am pretty passionate about engaging with representatives of the community in my research. Recently, with colleagues at the Patrick Wild Centre, we won funding to host a ‘family in residence’ at the Centre. This project aims to spend a year in close engagement with a family affected by Fragile X…
First of all, apologies as the blog – and twitter – have been rather quiet of late. I’ve been snowed under but it looks like I may be emerging from a very busy period soon. In the meantime, I’d love your help with something… I am planning a large and ambitious series of research projects looking at…
Last week I was privileged to spend some time with a high-school student of psychology, Lucy Purnell, who came to visit me at work for a few days. I have done this once before and enjoy the way it forces me to step back from my day to day tasks (often a lot of emailing and meetings) and think about…
Recently you may have seen a few headlines announcing that having a mother who goes out to work confers benefits on her children: the daughters earn more and do less housework, the sons share more of the burden of domestic responsibility. I work, and have always worked, full time in paid employment and have children aged 4…
Last week I was immensely privileged to be a part of a Wellcome Trust initiative called IdeasLab. The idea was, quite literally, to chuck a bunch of filmmakers and a bunch of scientists into a room together with some coffee and muffins, to see what happens. I expect the bods at Wellcome did also have some more specific goals in…
A short blog post today just to share the exciting (and slightly belated) news that we now have a few more research-based apps available for download. Our original app, Find Me, was developed for iOS (in other words, iPad and iPhone) and has received more than 100,000 downloads since its release. You can find out more about…
In 2003, enrolled on a Masters programme in developmental psychopathology (the study of atypical development – i.e. conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia and others) I was introduced to Waddington’s epigenetic landscape – shown in this image. For him, the image was about the action of genes on development, but for me and many others the image can instead…
Smartphones making children borderline autistic, warns expert This was the headline of an article published in the Telegraph – a respected UK newspaper – 4 days ago. My immediate response is summed up in the following tweet: This Telegraph piece is codswallop. I'll be posting an evidence-based response on my blog next week. https://t.co/KR46gCSDhp —…
After 2 years the long-awaited day has come and I have hit 1000 followers on twitter! One of my main goals on Twitter, and on this blog, is to try to give people an insight into the realities of the research process. I feel strongly that society as a whole would benefit from people having a…
At the start of this year I blogged about the importance of volunteering to participate in research – something which I believe ought to be considered as much a part of everyday generosity as blood donation. A twitter follower responded to my plea by suggesting: .@SueReviews include satisfaction questionnaires & participant feedback in published results to drive…
This week I’m welcoming my PhD student, Joy Tsai, who is a clinical psychologist from Taiwan and just coming to the end of a PhD researching the experiences of brothers and sisters of children with autism. You can download a TUKS UK summary report here. Finally, it comes to the final stage that I can tidy…
This was supposed to be my first post of the year, but a few days ago I felt the need for a minor rant about the claims being made about a new app. I hope it isn’t too late in the day to be blogging about New Year’s Resolutions. I suspect this is about the time…
You may have seen this headline in the news a little recently… As a resarcher who specialises in the study of technologies for autism, I was obviously intrigued. In case you’re not famliar with this blog and website, I should just quickly mention what work I’ve done which I think qualifies me to comment on…
By far the most popular post I wrote this year was this one in April about dealing with rejection as an academic. Likewise, one of my favourite posts which I read was this ‘backwards CV‘ – a phenomenon I could easily replicate with my own list of rejections. Everyone I know who works in academia knows that…
This has been a great couple of months as two studies – not huge, but important to me – have recently yielded really super results. And I don’t mean results in the usual sense (for scientists) – significant differences between groups, correlational relationships… I mean results as in, outputs that people can actually use (or…
This week I’d like to introduce a new guest blogger, Tom Pittwood from Brain in Hand. Tom is a researcher and training supporter for this company who are exploring ways to use technology, specifically mobile devices, to support independent living. Here Tom talks about his personal experiences with this technological support system. I do not like…
On Thursday this week I heard from a funder that they had decided not to award me close to £1,000,000 for a new project. I’ve written before about the agonies of rejection in academic life, so I won’t dwell on the inevitable disappointment here. Instead, I want to think aloud about how to create a new…
Recently a fantastic student of mine was awarded a mark of 80% in her Masters dissertation project – extrememly rare at this level and in this case utterly deserved. Her project focused on creating an authentic (note – not necessarily the same as accurate) simulation tool to help people without autism gain insight into some of the sensory…
Some news to announce here – in September 2014 I’ll be transferring from my current base in the School of Education to a home in part of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicinehere at the University of Edinburgh. This new role reflects the fact that my work has been moving in a more and more clinical direction over…
On holiday with my parents last week and talking about my career plans, I became aware of how obscure the content of an academic researcher’s job is to anyone outside. It has galvanized me to write a blog I’ve been meaning to do for a while about what the day to day life of an…
A while back I favourited a link on Twitter calling for researchers to describe their work using only the 100 most common English words, using this clever site. Today I’ve done just that, translating the home page of this site into accessible language. It was really hard – there’s no “autism” of course, no “research“, and…
Recently I took part in a training session for postgraduate students on how to secure funding for their future academic progression. Against a backdrop of dramatic statistics about the small percentage of science PhD graduates who remain in academia, (see page 14), the goal of the session was to help PhD students identify sources of funding but,…
We would like to invite any and all members of the autism community to participate in an online survey to explore attitudes to research. We’re hoping to hear from autistic adults, parents of children with autism, clinical practitioners, teachers and anyone else who feels invested in this work. In particular, we’re interested in early autism research. This is…
People often ask me something along the lines of “are iPads useful for kids with autism?” – a question I struggle to answer.
Please check out this research opportunity below – this study looks like a lot of fun and could be very informative. Movement patterns in autism are poorly understood and it is great that this Scottish research group are investigating this interesting area.
As my current ‘tenure-track’ post evolves, I am taking on more and more student supervision at undergraduate, taught Masters and PhD level. I am also doing quite a lot of interdisciplinary supervision which gives me a chance to work with a range of more experienced supervisors who are also from different backgrounds.
Just a quick post this week to let you all know about my latest podcast with colleague Jen Ross of the Digital Cultures in Education research group here at the University of Edinburgh.
This is a quick post in response to some comments and questions about my app wheel, which has been doing some alarmingly extensive rounds on Twitter and the like. Other groups have been putting together lists of recommended apps formatted in this way. In particular I’m a fan of this wheel of apps for autism developed in…
In case you haven’t been sent a copy, here’s a festive chance to see me strutting my stuff to a Christmas classic. It comes with blushes and best wishes from everyone at DART! Click here to see Sue succumb to yuletide madness!
I’m hoping there are a few last minute shoppers out there because here, at last, is my promised blog post on the best apps to buy for your wee ones this Christmas. This is broken down into two age-groups – a Christmas stocking for pre-school children and a Christmas stocking for primary-aged kids.
This is a quick blog post and an appeal for feedback from the autism community. Unlike other posts, I’m going to open this one for comments (assuming it has worked which I’m not sure about…).
As described in this previous post, my recently-completed Click-East project was wrapped up with a tea party for families who took part. As well sharing our findings and just generally getting together for a natter, the tea party was a chance for me to find out what these parents felt should be a priority for research in the…
Apologies – the blog has been a bit quiet of late! I’ll be returning soon with a second follow-up on the Click-East Tea Party outcomes, thinking about the kinds of research parents want to see in the future. And before Christmas I’ll be posting a couple of wish lists of technology for children and adults…
My husband, Ben Fletcher-Watson, is currently studying for a PhD in Drama, exploring the meaning, quality and accessibility of theatre for the very young.
I’m delighted to welcome Katie Chodosh who has written a guest blog for DART this week…
Another podcast with my colleague and Beltane Fellowship holder, Jen Ross.
A couple of weeks ago I held a little tea party for participants and supporters of the Click-East project which has been my main focus (read: all encompassing obsession) for the past 3 years.
It started when, earlier this year, a gay man was appointed as chief executive officer of the American Psychiatric Association. Like many, I was delighted to see that Dr Saul Levin was heading up an organisation which, only forty years previously had categorised homosexuality as a mental illness. Another first thought was along the lines of…
Parents of children with autism, and autistic people, often share their frustration with the claims of so-called ‘experts’. I suppose I am one of these people – an ‘autism professional’ – who purports to have some kind of insight into autism.
As I may have mentioned, once or twice, just in passing, I am now the proud possessor of a Beltane Public Enagement Fellowship. You can find out more about the goals of the scheme at the Beltane site.
Reviews here of another five autism apps, previously posted individually on Twitter.
Quite a big question to answer… I’m motivated to have a stab at it this week for two reasons. First, I’ve just returned to the office after ten days away during which time I volunteered on a residential summer holiday for children with a range of moderate to severe learning difficulites. I’ve been volunteering on the holiday…
I am a Lower Sixth student studying Psychology. I have one more year until I leave school and go to University and although I know I want to do a Psychology degree I am not sure where I want to go afterwards so for the last five days I have been in Edinburgh doing a…
Reviews here of another six autism apps, previously posted individually on Twitter. The apps covered this month are: Money Counting – non-autism specific app to rehearse using American coins How to Make Lifelong Friends – an e-book for adolescents / adults with guidance on making friends iasku – a communicator app based on PECS-principles for non-verbal or minimally-verbal…
I’ve been a researcher working with people with autism for a decade now and in that time I’ve worked with adults, adolescents, young children and their parents, teachers, clinicians and other members of what I often refer to as “the autism community”.
Another five app reviews for the last month: these are AutisMate, Injini, Thomas the Tank Engine Game Pack, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and all the apps in the iHelp range (there are about fourteen currently available).
Earlier this month at IMFAR 2013 – the International Meeting for Autism Research – I presented a conference poster reporting on the Click-East project.
My latest app review is a slightly different format where I’m making a direct comparison between 6 apps for roughly the same purpose. All of these allow the user to touch symbols on the screen, producing audio from the iPad, as a method of communication.
This week I have had the very great pleasure of attending the International Meeting for Autism Research in San Sebastián / Donostia in northern Spain. Loads of things about the conference were great, not least the extraordinary venue and the beautiful city with its delicious local cuisine.
There’s an issue here which has been building up in my mind for some time so I wanted to put my thoughts down. I hope they might be of use and interest to both researchers in the field, and to parents or practitioners supporting people with autism.
Here we go with another six app reviews: I’ve tried to go beyond my usual pre-school remit but it seems that there are far fewer apps out there being targeted for older children, adolescents and adults with autism.
I am absolutely delighted to say that our commercial partners, Interface 3, have recently released the full version of the Click-East project app on iTunes, in the form of an update to the original app.
A quick post to put up my first five app reviews, which I’m now posting as often as I can on Twitter, @SueReviews. Hopefully with time this will start to be a good resource of app reviews specific to autism using a consistent template to evaluate apps.
Me and my daughters going blue for World Autism Awareness Day 02.04.2013 – jumping the gun a bit by posting the night before, sorry!
Well, I have bitten the bullet and joined Twitter – despite working in technology I’m not much of any early adopter as you can see! My twitter account is @SueReviews
I’m delighted to feature a guest blog today from a colleague here at Moray House School of Education, called Andrew Manches. Andrew is a former teacher and now researcher with an interest in how children learn through physical interaction with objects including technology. Developments in digital technology give us new ways to represent, manipulate, and share information.…
A slightly belated response to International Women’s Day 2013, which took place on Friday 8th March. As a woman living in the UK in the 21st century I am free from many of the challenges and abuses faced by women elsewhere in the world.
I am off tomorrow to the National Autistic Society professional conference in Harrogate – and I’m only sorry I can’t stay for the whole thing (my childcare duties call me home!).
Regular readers will have seen that we have recently closed recruitment for the Click-East project, which is the study for which this website was set up.
Recently I had the great pleasure of attending the Meeting of Minds IV conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. I really enjoyed the conference, which had an admirable focus on looking at autism across the whole lifespan, and some excellent speakers including Pat Howlin, Liz Pellicano and Richard Mills.
Recruitment is now closed for the Click-East study, and over the next seven days myself and my research associate will be seeing a last seven families who would like to enrol.
A quick blog post today as in ten minutes I’m off for Christmas – and I hope you will all be having a well-deserved rest at this time of year too!
A quick blog this week, just to link to this excellent, short interview with Richard Mills. He is Director of Research at the National Autistic Society and is a fantastic supporter of academics working in an effort to benefit the autism community.
The time has come when I am beginning to turn my attention to thinking about what projects I’ll be engaged in after the Click-East study comes to an end in July 2013.
A quick post this week just to link to a video showcasing a colleague’s research project which is combining eye-tracking and virtual reality characters to explore how people with and without autism view social information.
I recently had the opportunity to be filmed talking about my current research as part of a University of Edinburgh project. If you’re interested in a one minute digest of what we’re doing then check it out here.
The period in which we can recruit new families into the Click-East trial is coming to an end in January 2013 so my big priority right now is to see as many families as I possibly can.
People reading this blog and those I work with would be forgiven for thinking that I haven’t really been doing anything on the Click-East trial lately. However it is ticking over smoothly in the background, though there has been a recent dip in recruitment.
Shamefully, I haven’t posted for two months. And now I can hardly believe that the AWARE event is just around the corner. Amazingly, we were awarded funding for an event for 25 people but the latest delegate count indicates we’ll be hosting over 40.
I was delighted to be asked to do a blog for Autism Initiatives: it sums up a lot of what we’re trying to do with Click-East and the AWARE event in September. Have a look!
This blog post is to announce a one-off event being held at the University of Edinburgh in September 2012. The event has secured funding from the University’s Challenge Investment Fund, and it aims to bring together people from different backgrounds who share an interest in providing technology-based solutions to the difficulties faced by people with autism spectrum…
Phase Two of our research program is now well underway. Ten participants have signed the consent form to formally enrol, and completed their first assessment.
A final year student at the Edinburgh College of Art, Yuan Kai, has been working on the Click-East app for some time. Her designs feature in the free version, which is currently available on iTunes, and also on the more extensive verison that we’re trialling at the moment.
This blog post is a bit of a cheat as I’m actually just going to re-blog a post by my husband! He is studying for a PhD on theatre for the very young, and we are currently collaborating on a paper which discusses how best to make performances appropriate for infants and toddlers.
During the Click-East project we have engaged in a lot of participatory design and other piloting processes. Participatory design means having the expected end users of a product (in this case an iPad app) contribute to the design process.
Good Morning on World Autism Awareness Day! This blog will be pretty brief but I wanted to write a post to mark this important day for the autism community, and to mark my support by Lighting Up Blue!
Our amendments to the ethics approval have been considered and signed off, the assessment room is ready to go, I’ve done a practice run with my own daughter and a friend’s son, and the app is nigh on finished. So there’s nothing in the way anymore, and recruitment for our clinical trial has officially begun. …
Well, almost a month since the last post on this page, and that was a guest blogger (thanks, Michelle!) so I don’t have a leg to stand on.
I am a Mum of six children two of them having severe and complex needs. One of my sons, is sixteen and has Tuberous Sclerosis, which presents him with mild Autism and learning difficulties, as well as a whole host of other problems and disorders.
Since the press coverage of our app last week, I’ve received a huge number of enquiries from parents, teachers and other people who are close to children with autism.
Another new experience for me this week – composing a press release in advance of the publication of our app on the Apple Store tomorrow (11th January 2012).
The post you’ve all been waiting for with baited breath – the why’s and wherefore’s of the Research Ethics approval process! But seriously, this is a big issue for researchers, participants in research and the general public.
8th December 2011, 1.29pm: I had intended to make this blog about the process of getting ethical approval for a research study: hard work and poorly understood by anyone who hasn’t done it, including me until last year!
25th November 2011, 9.47am: My first proper blog post. The issue that’s really exercising the team right now is about Intellectual Property rights, licensing and so forth. The big question is how we ensure a life for the CLICK-EAST game after the current research grant runs out.
This is an experiment for me! I’m running the CLICK-EAST study and I’m going to try keeping a blog from now until the end of the study in July 2013.