
Dr Emma Williams
About
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
Publications
Children with autism achieve mirror self-recognition appropriate to developmental age, but are nonetheless reported to have problems in other aspects of a sense of self. We observed behaviour in the mirror in 12 pre-school children with autism, 13 pre-school children with Down syndrome (DS) and 13 typically developing (TD) toddlers. Reliable differences in reflecting actions, social relatedness and positive affect towards themselves, and an absence of coy smiles differentiated the children with autism from the others. The children with DS showed the highest interest in their own faces. These differences were largely independent of mirror self-recognition (MSR), broadly supporting arguments for dissociation between interpersonal and conceptual aspects of self. Mirror behaviour may be a subtle but easily elicited measure of the social quality of a sense of self.
Evidence that interpersonal interactions and self-appraisal in social context are crucial in developing self-understanding raises concerns about how pupils with autism spectrum disorder make sense of themselves in school settings where many experience social marginalisation. Metasynthesis was used to systematically extract and integrate findings from qualitative studies examining the mainstream school experiences of these students. Synthesised findings identified three, intermeshing, aspects of experience which contribute to many pupils with autism spectrum disorder making sense of themselves as ‘different’ to typical peers in a negative way: difficulties linked to autism spectrum disorder; interpersonal relationships, particularly with peers; and accessibility of the school environment. Typical pupils’ attitudes and responses towards peers with autism spectrum disorder, unusual sensory reactions to the physical school environment and individual sense-making about the self are highlighted as key areas requiring further research and intervention to improve the experiences, self-esteem and well-being of pupils with autism spectrum disorder in inclusive settings and to inform educational policy and practice.
Background: There have been calls for speech and language therapists (SLTs) to work within a public-health framework to support language development. Innovative practice is reported, but the range of services remains unknown. Furthermore, the potential impact of public health practice in speech and language therapy on early child development is also currently unknown. A new method in SLT research, systematic scoping reviews enable greater breadth of focus than traditional systematic reviews when identifying innovative practice. Aim: To report scope and critically appraise evidence of family-focused health-promotion practice for early language development in this area. Methods & Procedures: Using the Cochrane Public Health Group scoping review framework, data from reports of health-promotion practice with families of children aged 0–3 years were extracted and critically appraised on service delivery, information, reach and evaluation. Main contribution: Group-based service delivery was the most popular form of service delivery. There were limited reports on the information given in services and on their reach. Questionnaires were the most popular reported evaluation method. Quality of evaluations was poor due to lack of replicability and experimental control in the studies reported. Conclusions & Implications: This method of systematic review has highlighted the scope of health-promotion practice in speech and language therapy and also demonstrated the lack of evidence for its effectiveness on child language development. It is argued that systematic scoping reviews are valuable for scoping innovative practice in areas where either there is a lack of robust evidence or there is a high level of heterogeneity in practice or evaluation. To support clinician appraisal of available evidence, recommendations are given for development of questionnaire appraisal and for categorization of evidence levels on summary databases.
According to the original theory-theory account of social cognition, 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 do this. This chapter presents evidence from personal accounts written by individuals diagnosed with either High-Functioning Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome which turns the theory-theory explanation on its head. These autobiographical writings suggest that it is individuals with autism, not typical children or adults, whose approach to understanding other people can best be characterised as scientific and rule-based. Moreover, the adoption of a logical, rule-based approach to understanding other people by those with a high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder leads not to successful social relationships, as the theory-theory account would predict, but instead to inflexibility and frequent social breakdown. I will argue that we do not usually have to theorise that other people have minds in order to understand and relate to them. Our ability to make sense of other people develops from the earliest months of life in the course of our active, affectively patterned, engagement with those around us in many different situational contexts. It is this, not any ‘theory’, which underpins our skill in negotiating day-to-day social interactions.
This qualitative study addresses the lack of research into the role of trusted adults in the spiritual lives of children. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine children from a British primary school and the data analysed using a grounded theory approach. Six categories were identified outlining the reciprocal relationship of unavailability and withholding between children and their trusted adults and how children made sense of spirituality in the absence of explicit guidance. It was found that the children had little opportunity for negotiating a shared understanding or experience of spirituality with adults and, as a result, either preserved an isolated and secret sense of spirituality or accepted what they observed to be their trusted adults' stance. The practical and theoretical implications of the children's responses in the absence of trusted adults are discussed and recommendations are made for practice and future research. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.
Background: Research evidence suggests that self-understanding is likely to be limited in individuals with autism. Method: Photo-elicitation interview was used to explore self-understanding in five adolescent boys diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition. Results: An interpretative phenomenological analysis yielded three superordinate themes: self in action, self extended in time and self in relation to others. These themes captured how participants understood themselves in terms of their actions and abilities, in the context of their past and future and in relation to others. Implications: The findings suggested that self-understanding is informed by relationships with parents, self-other comparisons and by reflecting on past and future selves, as well as on activities engaged in. Photo-elicitation was effective in engaging participants with the research process.
Thinking of starting a postdoc? Want to know how to move on from a postdoc? Or simply want to make the best of your postdoc years? Being a postdoc is not a career ... but it can be the pivotal point in the making of one. This friendly, practical, and occasionally humorous guide to all things postdoc combines the three authors’ vast experience of postdoc careers and personal development. This is a guide to developing, advancing and furthering yourself and your career. In working through exercises, learning from the experience of others (including the trials and tribulations of the authors), and seeking out information, we hope you will consider what success means on your own terms. In its pages you will find advice on: Choosing the right postdoc for you Maximising your postdoc contract for personal and professional goals Selecting and attaining your next career step (academic or otherwise) Your postdoc is part of the journey towards a range of career destinations; from an industrial R&D specialist to politician, from lecturer to spin-out Chief Executive, and this book is designed to help you get there. Providing indispensable advice on UK-based postdocs for national and international students, it is perfect for those making exciting transitions (student to postdoc, postdoc to the wide world of careers beyond) or for those who simply want to take their postdoc up a gear.