The Laughter Project is led by Ceci, together with Sarah and Prof. Sophie Scott. We focus on the understanding and production of laughter in autistic and non-autistic adults.
The Laughter Project
Projects
Theory of Mind - Autism in Pakistan
Funded by UCL’s GEO, this study aims to study cognitive differences in autism, within the Pakistani population.
Inter-Group Bias Project
In this project, we will investigate the effect of inter-group bias on spontaneous mentalizing in autistic and non-autistic people. We’re interested in whether we can modulate mentalizing by changing the social environment.
Mentalizing and Executive Function
Investigating the ‘Triple I Hypothesis’ – an inability to infer implicit instructions (White, 2013), this project aims to explore the role of implicit mentalizing in executive function difficulties experienced by autistic individuals within open-ended executive function tasks.
Spotting Lies and Reading Minds: Development of Deception in autism
Deception is ever-present in day-to-day life, and this project aims to investigate how the ability to detect deception develops over time and if this ability might be an area of difficulty for autistic individuals.
Mentalizing and Compensation (M&C) Project
The M&C Project aims to explore mental state decoding and reasoning, the possibilities of modulating mentalizing performance, the role of compensation and its outcomes on mental health in individuals with various degrees of autistic traits.
The SensorAble Project
90% of autistic adults report that sensory issues cause significant barriers at school and work (Leekam et al., 2007). Wearable technologies (e.g., smart glasses) offer the possibility to monitor environments and adjust user-experiences. This project proposes applying such technologies to reduce anxiety-inducing distractions and create prompts that may increase autistic adults’ attentional-focus and quality-of-life.