Sue Fletcher-Watson
Biographic Data
| ID | 1463617 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sue Fletcher-Watson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sue |
| FAMILY NAME | Fletcher-Watson |
| SIGNATURE | FLETCHER-WATSON S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2688-1734 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Connections between science and care within public and global health research: The need for attention and action
Connections between science and care are common, such as when people access particular therapies through participating in research. However, interactions go far beyond medical treatment per se, with other kinds of advice and support (including direct financial support) also warranting consideration. Such complexities of the science-care relationship are often not fully accounted for by formal ethical and governance processes and approvals. This c…
Population-level transitions in observed difficulties through childhood and adolescence
In an attempt to better characterize the complexity of difficulties observed within developing populations, numerous data-driven techniques have been applied to large mixed data sets. However, many have failed to incorporate the core role of developmental time in these approaches, that is, the typical course of change in behavioral features that occurs over childhood to adolescence. In this study, we utilized manifold projections alongside a grad…
Information transfer within and between autistic and non-autistic people
Autism is clinically defined by social communication deficits, suggesting that autistic people may be less effective at sharing information, particularly with one another. However, recent research indicates that neurotype mismatches, rather than autism itself, degrade information sharing. Here, using the diffusion chain method, we examined information transfer in autistic, non-autistic and mixed-neurotype chains (N = 311), replicating and extendi…
Measuring the Relationship between Bilingual Exposure and Social Attentional Preferences in Autistic Children
Background: Autistic children show reduced attentional preferences to social stimuli early in development, and these differences have consequences on a range of social domains. One factor that could influence development in those processes is bilingualism. Parents and practitioners frequently voice unfounded concerns that bilingualism could cause delays in autistic children, yet there is little evidence to dispute this idea. While there are studi…
Transdiagnostic research and the neurodiversity paradigm: Commentary on the transdiagnostic revolution in neurodevelopmental disorders by Astle et al
In their comprehensive and articulate paper on the Transdiagnostic Revolution in Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Astle, Holmes, Kievit and Gathercole (2022) ‘consider how well current classifications of neurodevelopmental disorders serve our understanding’ . They examine the lack of mapping between clinical diagnoses such as ADHD or autism and research data at other levels of explanation, including genetics, neural structure and function, and cogni…
Social gaze in preterm infants may act as an early indicator of atypical lateralization
Visual field biases have been identified as markers of atypical lateralization in children with developmental conditions, but this is the first investigation to consider early lateralized gaze behaviors for social stimuli in preterm infants. Eye-tracking methods with 51 preterm (33 male, 92.1% White) and 61 term-born (31 male, 90.1% White) infants aged 8–10 months from Edinburgh, UK, captured the development of visual field biases, comparing gaze…
Experience of clinical services shapes attitudes to mental health data sharing: Findings from a UK-wide survey
These findings suggest that positive experiences of health services and personal experience of mental illness are associated with greater willingness to share mental health data. NHS satisfaction is a potentially modifiable factor that could foster public support for increased use of NHS mental health data in research
Eye‐tracking for longitudinal assessment of social cognition in children born preterm
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Preterm birth is associated with atypical social cognition in infancy, and cognitive impairment and social difficulties in childhood. Little is known about the stability of social cognition through childhood, and its relationship with neurodevelopment. We used eye-tracking in preterm and term-born infants to investigate social attentional preference in infancy and at 5 years, its relationship with neurodevelopment and t…
Commentary: What conflicts of interest tell us about autism intervention research—a commentary on Bottema‐Beutel et al. (2020)
Bottema‐Beutel, Crowley, Sandbank, and Woynaroski ( Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2020) have performed a Herculean and invaluable task in their investigation of conflicts of interest (COIs) in nonpharmacological early autism intervention research. Drawing on a meta‐analysis of 150 articles reporting group designs, they found COIs in 105 (70%), only 6 (5.7%) of which had fully accurate COI statements. Most reports had no COI statemen…
Co-development of a Best Practice Checklist for Mental Health Data Science: A Delphi Study
Background: Mental health research is commonly affected by difficulties in recruiting and retaining participants, resulting in findings which are based on a sub-sample of those actually living with mental illness. Increasing the use of Big Data for mental health research, especially routinely-collected data, could improve this situation. However, steps to facilitate this must be enacted in collaboration with those who would provide the data - peo…
Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective
Effective information transfer requires social communication skills. As autism is clinically defined by social communication deficits, it may be expected that information transfer between autistic people would be particularly deficient. However, the Double Empathy theory would suggest that communication difficulties arise from a mismatch in neurotype; and thus information transfer between autistic people may be more successful than information tr…
Making the future together: Shaping autism research through meaningful participation
Participatory research methods connect researchers with relevant communities to achieve shared goals. These methods can deliver results that are relevant to people’s lives and thus likely to have a positive impact. In the context of a large and growing body of autism research, with continued poor implementation, and some evidence of community dissatisfaction, there is a powerful case for participatory autism research. In order to develop a framew…
Autism: A New Introduction to Psychological Theory and Current Debate
Diversity computing
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Links between Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnostic Status and Family Quality of Life
Quality of life is often relatively lowered in families of children with additional needs, and this may be particularly the case where additional needs are accompanied by an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here we explore the effects of diagnostic status specifically, comparing families with children with an ASD diagnosis with others who a) have additional needs but no signs of ASD; and b) have additional needs and signs of ASD but no diagnosis. …
Multiple Measures of Fixation on Social Content in Infancy: Evidence for a Single Social Cognitive Construct
The preference of infants to fixate on social information in a stimulus is well known. We examine how this preference manifests across a series of free‐viewing tasks using different stimulus types. Participants were thirty typically developing infants. We measured eye movements when viewing isolated faces, faces alongside objects in a grid, and faces naturally presented in photographed scenes. In each task, infants fixated social content for long…
Evidence-based technology design and commercialisation: Recommendations derived from research in education and autism
A review of methods in the study of attention in autism
Do people with autistic spectrum disorder show normal selection for attention? Evidence from change blindness
People in the general population are typically very poor at detecting changes in pictures of complex scenes. The degree of this ‘change blindness’, however, varies with the content of the scene: when an object is semantically important or contextually inappropriate, people may be more effective at detecting changes. Two experiments investigated change blindness in people with autism, who are known from previous research to be efficient in detecti…
No prominent works on this page.
Do people with autistic spectrum disorder show normal selection for attention? Evidence from change blindness
People in the general population are typically very poor at detecting changes in pictures of complex scenes. The degree of this ‘change blindness’, however, varies with the content of the scene: when an object is semantically important or contextually inappropriate, people may be more effective at detecting changes. Two experiments investigated change blindness in people with autism, who are known from previous research to be efficient in detecti…
A review of methods in the study of attention in autism
Evidence-based technology design and commercialisation: Recommendations derived from research in education and autism
Multiple Measures of Fixation on Social Content in Infancy: Evidence for a Single Social Cognitive Construct
The preference of infants to fixate on social information in a stimulus is well known. We examine how this preference manifests across a series of free‐viewing tasks using different stimulus types. Participants were thirty typically developing infants. We measured eye movements when viewing isolated faces, faces alongside objects in a grid, and faces naturally presented in photographed scenes. In each task, infants fixated social content for long…
Links between Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnostic Status and Family Quality of Life
Quality of life is often relatively lowered in families of children with additional needs, and this may be particularly the case where additional needs are accompanied by an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here we explore the effects of diagnostic status specifically, comparing families with children with an ASD diagnosis with others who a) have additional needs but no signs of ASD; and b) have additional needs and signs of ASD but no diagnosis. …
Diversity computing
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Making the future together: Shaping autism research through meaningful participation
Participatory research methods connect researchers with relevant communities to achieve shared goals. These methods can deliver results that are relevant to people’s lives and thus likely to have a positive impact. In the context of a large and growing body of autism research, with continued poor implementation, and some evidence of community dissatisfaction, there is a powerful case for participatory autism research. In order to develop a framew…
Autism: A New Introduction to Psychological Theory and Current Debate
Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective
Effective information transfer requires social communication skills. As autism is clinically defined by social communication deficits, it may be expected that information transfer between autistic people would be particularly deficient. However, the Double Empathy theory would suggest that communication difficulties arise from a mismatch in neurotype; and thus information transfer between autistic people may be more successful than information tr…
Eye‐tracking for longitudinal assessment of social cognition in children born preterm
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Preterm birth is associated with atypical social cognition in infancy, and cognitive impairment and social difficulties in childhood. Little is known about the stability of social cognition through childhood, and its relationship with neurodevelopment. We used eye-tracking in preterm and term-born infants to investigate social attentional preference in infancy and at 5 years, its relationship with neurodevelopment and t…
Commentary: What conflicts of interest tell us about autism intervention research—a commentary on Bottema‐Beutel et al. (2020)
Bottema‐Beutel, Crowley, Sandbank, and Woynaroski ( Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2020) have performed a Herculean and invaluable task in their investigation of conflicts of interest (COIs) in nonpharmacological early autism intervention research. Drawing on a meta‐analysis of 150 articles reporting group designs, they found COIs in 105 (70%), only 6 (5.7%) of which had fully accurate COI statements. Most reports had no COI statemen…
Co-development of a Best Practice Checklist for Mental Health Data Science: A Delphi Study
Background: Mental health research is commonly affected by difficulties in recruiting and retaining participants, resulting in findings which are based on a sub-sample of those actually living with mental illness. Increasing the use of Big Data for mental health research, especially routinely-collected data, could improve this situation. However, steps to facilitate this must be enacted in collaboration with those who would provide the data - peo…
Transdiagnostic research and the neurodiversity paradigm: Commentary on the transdiagnostic revolution in neurodevelopmental disorders by Astle et al
In their comprehensive and articulate paper on the Transdiagnostic Revolution in Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Astle, Holmes, Kievit and Gathercole (2022) ‘consider how well current classifications of neurodevelopmental disorders serve our understanding’ . They examine the lack of mapping between clinical diagnoses such as ADHD or autism and research data at other levels of explanation, including genetics, neural structure and function, and cogni…
Social gaze in preterm infants may act as an early indicator of atypical lateralization
Visual field biases have been identified as markers of atypical lateralization in children with developmental conditions, but this is the first investigation to consider early lateralized gaze behaviors for social stimuli in preterm infants. Eye-tracking methods with 51 preterm (33 male, 92.1% White) and 61 term-born (31 male, 90.1% White) infants aged 8–10 months from Edinburgh, UK, captured the development of visual field biases, comparing gaze…
Experience of clinical services shapes attitudes to mental health data sharing: Findings from a UK-wide survey
These findings suggest that positive experiences of health services and personal experience of mental illness are associated with greater willingness to share mental health data. NHS satisfaction is a potentially modifiable factor that could foster public support for increased use of NHS mental health data in research
Measuring the Relationship between Bilingual Exposure and Social Attentional Preferences in Autistic Children
Background: Autistic children show reduced attentional preferences to social stimuli early in development, and these differences have consequences on a range of social domains. One factor that could influence development in those processes is bilingualism. Parents and practitioners frequently voice unfounded concerns that bilingualism could cause delays in autistic children, yet there is little evidence to dispute this idea. While there are studi…
Population-level transitions in observed difficulties through childhood and adolescence
In an attempt to better characterize the complexity of difficulties observed within developing populations, numerous data-driven techniques have been applied to large mixed data sets. However, many have failed to incorporate the core role of developmental time in these approaches, that is, the typical course of change in behavioral features that occurs over childhood to adolescence. In this study, we utilized manifold projections alongside a grad…
Information transfer within and between autistic and non-autistic people
Autism is clinically defined by social communication deficits, suggesting that autistic people may be less effective at sharing information, particularly with one another. However, recent research indicates that neurotype mismatches, rather than autism itself, degrade information sharing. Here, using the diffusion chain method, we examined information transfer in autistic, non-autistic and mixed-neurotype chains (N = 311), replicating and extendi…
Connections between science and care within public and global health research: The need for attention and action
Connections between science and care are common, such as when people access particular therapies through participating in research. However, interactions go far beyond medical treatment per se, with other kinds of advice and support (including direct financial support) also warranting consideration. Such complexities of the science-care relationship are often not fully accounted for by formal ethical and governance processes and approvals. This c…
Psychology (14 works) · Autism Spectrum Disorder Research (11 works) · Developmental psychology (11 works) · Autism (9 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Cognition (5 works) · Psychiatry (5 works) · Autism spectrum disorder (4 works)