Research Summary
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How might interoceptive accuracy training work?
With the growing interest in apps and wearables that claim to be able to help us to learn how to improve our awareness of our own bodies’ signals, Murphy & Bird consider whether these claims can stand up. Evidence of better scores after training might not be about better awareness of our bodies. It could…
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Theoretical limitations on mindreading measures: commentary on Wendt et al. (2024)
This paper sees potential problems with traditional ToM tests by identifying the types of skills that are necessary for ToM judgements. Often, as psychologists, we are attempting to design experiments provide measurement for one skill without influence from other processes. With ToM doing this is difficult (maybe even impossible!) because there might not be a…
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Alexithymia may explain the genetic relationship between autism and sensory sensitivity.
This paper suggest that alexithymia – not autism – might explain some of the variability in sensory experiences among autistic people and beyond. The study used parent-reported data from adolescent twins to explore genetic relationships between autism, alexithymia, and sensory symptoms. The team found that genetic link between autism and sensory symptoms disappears when alexithymia…
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Special school staff perspectives on how careers guidance is provided to their autistic young people
The team looked at how careers guidance is provided to autistic pupils in special schools in England. Careers guidance helps young people move from school into work, and schools must offer this support by law. Researchers asked staff in 103 special schools across England to fill out a survey about what careers support they provide.…
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Experiences of interoception and anxiety in autistic adolescents
A reflexive thematic analysis Kiera Adams, Jonahs Smith, Mary Brown, Geoff Bird, and Polly Waite (2025) research gate We all know the feeling: your heart races before a big event, your stomach twists with nerves, and your hands feel clammy when you’re anxious. But what if you couldn’t recognize these signals? Or worse, what if…
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Who Tweets for the autistic community? An NLP-driven investigation
An analysis of more than 5 million tweets created a huge data set that could be investigated. It allowed a statical test to be run to see the similarities between what autistic people write, what their parents write, what is written by autistic self-advocacy groups, and what is written by autism advocacy groups that autistic…
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The theory of mind hypothesis of autism: A critical evaluation of the status quo.
For several years the Theory of Mind (ToM) hypothesis has been suggested as an underlying mechanism for understanding autism. It finds that no existing models fully explain ToM in autism. So, the team introduce the Mind-space framework. Problems with the current Theory of Mind hypothesis: • Describing and explaining ToM differences in autism is quite…
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Individuals who are ‘super recognisers’ show superior performance on independent measures of face perception, face memory and face matching
Some people are far better than others at recognising faces. These people are called super recognisers. Scientists want to know why they are so good. Usual tests mix together different skills, like noticing details in a face, remembering faces, and deciding if two faces are the same. This makes it hard to know which skill…
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“I did what I could to earn some money and be of use”: A qualitative exploration of autistic people’s journeys to career success and fulfilment
Employment is beneficial to people’s overall wellbeing, but many autistic people who want to work face challenges in finding and maintaining meaningful employment. Much of the current research focuses on employment rates (e.g., whether someone has a job or not), rather than an understanding of career development and experiences. This study aimed to explore what…
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Perceptual Experiences of Autistic People With an Intellectual Disability and People With Williams Syndrome
We looked at how autistic people with intellectual disabilities and people with Williams Syndrome (WS) experience focus, distraction, and input like sounds or sight. We wanted to find out if autistic people with intellectual disabilities have the same “increased perceptual capacity” (ability to process more information) seen in autistic people without intellectual disabilities.