News

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    Congratulations to Ceci who was awarded her PhD in 2023! Ceci originally joined the lab in 2017 and during her PhD, supervised by Prof Sophie Scott and Dr Sarah White, she investigated the socio-emotional essence of vocal communication in autistic and non-autistic adults. Her work incorporated self-report questionnaires, behavioural experiments, and neuroimaging (fMRI). Ceci continues her research at the ICN as a postdoctoral research fellow – in 2023, she received a UCL Fellowship Incubation Award, enabling her to further study face-to-face social interaction from a neurodiversity perspective.

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    ​Congratulations to Ishita for passing her PhD viva in 2023! Ishita originally joined the Development Diversity Lab as a research assistant in 2017. During her time as a PhD student, supervised by Dr Sarah White, she studied how deception detection abilities change throughout development and if this might be an area of difficulty for autistic individuals. She also explored how these abilities might be related to mentalizing, bullying, and mental health. Ishita is now a Lecturer at University of Surrey, but she continues to collaborate with the Development Diversity Lab at UCL.

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    The 11th International Conference on Multimodality (ICOM-11)

    Between September 27 and 29, 2023, David Ruttenberg took on the roles of chair, panel participant, and presenter at the Multimodality and Future Landscapes event at ICOM-11, delving into topics like Meaning Making, AI, Education, Assessment, and Ethics. The presentation focused on data extracted from his thesis, which outlines improved approaches to alleviate sensory sensitivity experiences, attentional challenges, and mental well-being disturbances in autistic adults. This information was shared with an academic audience, emphasizing an ethical perspective geared towards protecting at-risk autistic individuals from security and harm issues when gathering their personal data through environmental and psychophysiological sensors.

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    LOGO for Florida Atlantic University Center for Autism and Related Disabilities

    After completing a 3-year term as Chairperson for the Florida Atlantic University’s Centre for Autism and Related Disabilities (FAU-CARD), David Ruttenberg was re-elected to the Executive Board for an extended 5-year term. FAU CARD, a community-based program, provides direct assistance to 7,500+ individuals with autism spectrum disorder and related disabilities, offering support to families, schools, and community agencies. Services include training for family members, professional development for educators, support groups, community education, information dissemination, referrals, newsletters, and email updates. The center also supports businesses working with individuals with autism, among other initiatives.

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    Several DevDivLab members and alumni presented at the ITAKOM Conference from Monday 13 – Tuesday 14 March 2023 at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre and online. These included posters from:

  • Ruihan Wu who presented on "Are the social abilities of neurodivergent individuals measured accurately? An intergroup bias in smile discrimination in autism."
  • David Ruttenberg who presented on "Sensory, Attention And Mental Health Interventions For Autism: A Technological Patient And Public Involvement Study."
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    To mark World Autism Awareness Day, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society (formerly the Institute of Education) rounded up a selection of the many ways our researchers, lecturers, and students are working to transform the narrative around autism in a recent twitter post. The DevDivLab was featured also featured in a Q&A Article featuring David Ruttenberg’s research.

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    PhD Student Researcher David Ruttenberg recently contributed to the UK Parliament’s Office of Science and Technology (POST) by helping to author a POSTnote entitled Invisible Disabilities in Education and Employment. This work provide an overview of invisible disability in the UK and outlines types of invisible differences and relevant legislation and policy. It also discusses the experiences of adults with invisible disabilities, and strategies aimed at increasing access and inclusion for adults with invisible disabilities, focusing on employment, and higher and further education. David drew from his research, and in particular, his focus group and questionnaire data that were part of his Patient and Public Information studies.

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    Several DevDivLab members and alumni presented at the London Meeting of the Experimental Psychology Society from 4-6 January 2023. These included:

  • Katherine Ellis who spoke on "Performance on implicit and explicit false belief tasks in children with Cornelia de Lange and fragile X syndromes".
  • Ceci Qing Cai who spoke on "Does laughter make things funnier? An fMRI study from a neurodiversity perspective".
  • David Ruttenberg who spoke on "Sensory, attention, and mental health interventions for autism: a technological patient and public involvement study".
  • Zuzana Nikodemova who presented a poster on "Investigating implicit mentalizing: Do bilinguals have an advantage?"
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    The Fragile X Society hosted an in-person conference at the Midlands Art Centre (Birmingham) for families and carers of people with FXS. They invited researchers from England and Scotland to talk about previous and current work with people with fragile X syndrome and their families.

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    Kat organised a research workshop with Prof Gaia Scerif hosted at St. Catherine’s College (University of Oxford) bringing together UK researchers interested in fragile X syndrome to share expertise, discuss current work and form future collaborations. There were a range of interesting sessions, including a talk by Prof Jonathan Herring on the law and practice of gaining consent from people with learning disabilities, quick fire updates on current research from UCL, University of Oxford, University of Surrey, University of Warwick and University of Edinburgh. We were also lucky enough to have a brilliant session with two young people who told us all about what it is like to have fragile X syndrome. Some family members and carers of those with fragile X syndrome joined us online and shared their ideas on how families and researchers can collaborate to shape future research.