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Dr Sue Fletcher-Watson

Nuffield Foundation New Career Development Fellow

Education, Community and Society (ECS)

Email: sue.fletcher-watson@ed.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)131 651 6356

Location:

St Johns Land (Rm 2.02)

Background

I first became interested in developmental disabilities, and autism in particular, through my work with the Oundle School Mencap Holiday, an organisation I've been volunteering with since 1997 and of which I am now a trustee. I took a degree in Psychology at the University of St Andrews, and then went on to a Masters and PhD at Durham University, supervised by Professor Sue Leekam. My PhD research explored the spontaneous social attention preferences of typically-developed adults and adolescents, and those with ASD, using a range of methods, including verbal descriptions, change blindness and eye-tracking. I then moved to Newcastle University under the mentorship of Professor Helen McConachie and went on to work on a project validating the Social Orienting Continuum and Response Scale (SOC-RS) for use in intervention studies with children with ASD. I am now employed on a Nuffield Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh. This project, called Click-East, has completed Stage One, which was development of an iPad app for children with autism. The app is available on the App Store in a free, reduced-content version called "FindMe Autism". The trial phase is now underway, with participants coming in for assessments beginning in April 2012. We hope to have completed the trial and published our findings by the end of 2013.

Qualifications:

BSc (hons) Psychology, University of St Andrews (first class), 2003
MA, Developmental Psychopathology, Durham University (with distinction), 2004
PhD., 'Understanding social attention in adults with and without autism spectrum disorders', Durham University, 2008

Groups

Member of the Edinburgh Child and Adolescent Psychology Network , or ECAP

Member of the Scottish Autism Research Group, or SARG

Member of the Developmental Psychology in Education group, or DPiE

Principal interests

Research interests include:

Cognitive and behavioural approaches to understanding typical and atypical development
Social attention; visual attention; motion processing; processing stimulus complexity; sensory integration; all in persons with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and typically-developing children and adults
Interventions: computer-based intervention and education for individuals with ASD; Theory of Mind based interventions for ASD
Methodology: eye-movement recording; change blindness; methods in the study of attention in typical and atypical development
Outcome measures for clinical research with individuals with ASD
Performance art for the very young

Research Supervision:
I would be interested in co-supervising students on any of the topics listed above.

I am second supervisor to Vinod Unni, co-supervised with Mick Power, Professor of Clinical Psychology

Current and recent research

CLICK-EAST: Computer-based Learning in Children: the Edinburgh Autism Social-attention Trial
Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund, 2012-2013 "In utero MR biomarkers of abnormal brain development – a proof of concept study"
Challenge Investment Fund, 2013, "AWARE: Autism Software, how to get it out there"
Nuffield New Career Development Fellowship, 2010-2013, 'Intervention for Social Attention in Autism Spectrum Disorders'.
NHS Sustainability and Development Funding, 2009-2010, 'Developing the Social Orienting Continuum and Response Scale for use as an outcome measure for interventions with children with autism'.
ESRC Post-doctoral Fellowshhip, 2008-2009, 'Social Attention in Autism Spectrum Disorders'.

Publications

Publications list for Dr Sue Fletcher-Watson

This article was published on May 6, 2013