Professor Sue Fletcher-Watson
Professor of Developmental Psychology; Director of the Salvesen Mindroom Research Centre

- Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences (Division of Psychiatry)
- Salvesen Mindroom Research Centre
- Patrick Wild Centre for Research into Autism, Fragile X Syndrome & Intellectual Disabilities
Contact details
Address
- Street
-
Kennedy Tower
Royal Edinburgh Hospital - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH10 5HF
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 became a trustee from 2006-2016. Inspired by OSMH, I am continuing this work as founder of SuperTroop, a charity providing residential holidays for children and young people with learning disabilities.
As an undergraduate I studied Psychology at the University of St Andrews, and then went on to a Masters and PhD at Durham University, where I was fortunate to be supervised by the wonderful Professor Sue Leekam. My PhD research explored the spontaneous social attention preferences of autistic and non-autistic adults and adolescents, using a range of methods, including verbal descriptions, change blindness and eye-tracking. Since then I have worked under the fabulous mentorship of Professor Helen McConachie including a Nuffield Fellowship which funded the Click-East project. I became a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh based in the Patrick Wild Centre and in 2019 I moved into the role of Director of the Salvesen Mindroom Research Centre.
I am a former trustee of Scottish Autism and working closely with this organisation, and autistic-led organisations such as ARGH and AMASE, to inspire and contribute to high-quality, respectful, evidence-based practice in Scotland. Public engagement is very important to me and I try to provide useful insights into research and accessible summaries of knotty academic issues in the DART blog.
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
Responsibilities & affiliations
Convenor of the Scottish ADOS Consortium
Chartered Psychologist, British Psychological Society
Research summary
I am interested in how children grow and learn, with a particular focus on non-normative experiences, such as autism and preterm birth.
My work aims to apply rigorous methods from psychology to questions with clinical, educational and societal impact. I strive to achieve meaningful partnerships with community representatives and to support neurodivergent leadership in research.
I am an advocate for open science and good citizenship in research.
Research aims and areas of interest
- Cognitive and behavioural approaches to understanding neurodiversity in (social) development & consequences for practice in education, health and social care
- Applied research for autism, drawing on Psychology, Medicine, Informatics and Education
- Complex intervention development and evaluation, including rigorous outcome measurement for clinical trials, and community trial methodology
- Infant cognition, and studying long-term outcomes in infants born premature
- Technology for learning; development of novel technologies to provide effective support, and evaluation of these in practice
- Methodologies: randomised controlled trials; eye-movement recording; experimental group comparisons; focus groups; interviews; online surveys, Delphi studies
Current project grants
Autism & Bilingualism in Childhood: http://dart.ed.ac.uk/research/bilingualism-childhood/
Theirworld Edinburgh Birth Cohort: www.tebc.ed.ac.uk/
Mental Health Data Science Scotland: https://mhdss.ac.uk/
-
The associations between camouflaging, autistic traits, and mental health in non-autistic adults
In:
Autism in Adulthood
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Accepted/In press) -
Short report: Autistic adults' recommendations on how to improve autistic portrayals in TV-series and movies
In:
Research in Developmental Disabilities, vol. 136, pp. 104484
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2023.104484
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
Innovation through neurodiversity: Diversity is beneficial
In:
Autism
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613231158685
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
Measuring the relationship between bilingual exposure and social attentional preferences in autistic children
(18 pages)
In:
Languages, vol. 8, pp. 1-18
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010027
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
"The languages that you know draw the boundary of your world": A thematic analysis of the experiences of autistic bilingual adults living in the United Kingdom
In:
Autism in Adulthood, vol. 4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2021.0077
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published)