Research Interests

My primary areas of research interest include:

• Qualitative investigations of how high-functioning individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) make sense of other people
• Autism and the sociocultural context of object use
• The inclusion of children with ASD into mainstream schooling
• The development of social understanding, play and humour in infancy

How do high-functioning individuals with ASD make sense of other people?

According to the theory theory account of understanding other minds children develop a succession of theories of mind that, just like scientific theories, postulate abstract coherent mental entities and laws, and provide predictions, interpretations and explanations. These, in turn, enable them to interact successfully with other people. Individuals with Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome are said to be unable to theorise about other minds, resulting in difficulties in relating to the people around them. My research explores the possibility that we can reconceptualise the assumed relationship from the other direction, proposing that it is misleading to construe the task of achieving social understanding as a logical, scientific, one. Rather, it is suggested that typical children do not have to theorise that there are minds as they have an intuitive grasp of them arising from their affective, co-regulated, interactions with other people. High-functioning individuals with autism or Asperger’s syndrome, on the other hand, do need to engage in theorising about mind, if they are to bridge the gap that exists between themselves and other people.

Current projects

• An Interpretative Phenomenologogical Analysis (IPA) of published autobiographical accounts written by individuals diagnosed with either high-Functioning Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome.
• A Semi-structured interview study conducted with individuals diagnosed as having high functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome, focussed on their understanding of, and relations with, other people. The information from the interviews will be analysed using IPA.

This work forms part of a larger body of work by a number of researchers, led by Alan Costall and Ivan Leudar, critiquing the “Theory of Mind” approach and presenting alternative accounts of how we make sense of-and make sense to-other people

See: Theory and Psychology (2004) Volume 14, Number 5. Special Issue: Theory of Mind 

Autism and the sociocultural context of object use

Psychology appears to have a special problem with objects. To the limited extent that psychological theory even touches on things, they have been regarded as existing in a physical, asocial, realm, as distinct from the sociocultural domain of people. This dualistic assumption, as well as the neglect of material culture, is apparent in current models of dysfunction in autism, which emphasise the difficulties that children with autism have in understanding and relating to other people and say relatively little about object use, other than pretend play. Even where pretend play is considered, the child’s actions with objects are not themselves of primary interest to psychologists; rather the child’s activity is treated as an indirect 'index' of the development of underlying ‘cognitive structures’ and the psychological significance of the objects themselves is downplayed.
My work in this area, drawing on an important body of ‘sociocultural’ research, challenges the notion of a rigid separation between the social and material in children’s developing understanding of their surroundings. Given the evidence that other people play an important role in introducing objects to children (Valsiner, 1987), it is proposed that the impairment in interpersonal relations experienced by children with autism should itself lead us to expect corresponding disruption in their use of objects. Conversely, an unusual use of objects is likely to manifest itself in disturbances in relating to other people, given the importance of a shared understanding and use of objects in facilitating interaction.

My research has focussed on the following areas:

• reviews of the published empirical and case study literature relating to object use in autism
• observational investigations of various aspects of object play including functional play, solitary object exploration and dyadic object play
• the use of everyday objects in the home

The collated evidence from these studies suggests that, in addition to their well-recognised problems in relating to other people, children with autism do experience widespread difficulties in their use of objects. In stressing the problems that children with autism appear to experience in object use, the purpose is not to downplay the social dimension of autism, in favour of a material one, but rather to highlight the reciprocal nature of the interactions between the child, other people, and objects.

Current project

Observational investigations of early solitary object play in children with autism aged 2-4 years

Relevant publications

Williams, E., Costall, A. & Reddy, V. (1999). Children with autism experience problems with both people and objects. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29 (5), 367-378

Williams, E. & Costall, A. (2000). Taking things more seriously: psychological theories of autism and the material-social divide, in Graves, P. (ed.), Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, Routledge, London, pp. 97-111.

Williams, E., Reddy, V. & Costall, A. (2001). Taking a closer look at functional play in children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31 (1), 67-77.

Williams, E. (2003). A comparative review of early forms of object-directed play and parent-infant play in typical infants and young children with autism. Autism: International Journal of Research and Practice, 7(4) 361-377.

Williams, E., Kendall-Scott, L & Costall, A. (2005). Parents’ experiences of introducing everyday object use to their children with autism. Autism: International Journal of Research and Practice, 9(5) 521-540.

Williams, E., Kendall-Scott, L. (In press). Everyday objects and children with autism. In Costall, A. and O. Dreier (eds.). Doing Things with Things. Ashgate publishers.

Teaching

Undergraduate

I am currently final year tutor for the BSc Psychology degree and oversee the final year dissertation module.
I teach on the following modules:

PS. 203 Developmental Psychology (Level 2)

PS. 210 Research Methods 2: design (Level 2)

Postgraduate

M1 Research Methods and Data Analysis

Qualitative Research methods