Dr Elisabeth Hill - Research projects

AUTISM AND EMPLOYMENT

For many parents, caring for a child with autism presents a roller-coaster of challenges and joys. Many find it difficult to come to terms with their child’s diagnosis and find that caring for a child with autism places significant emotional and physical pressures on them.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that the majority of mothers leave work or reduce their hours to provide support for their child. However, little is known about the impact that caring for a child with autism has on a parents’ ability to maintain employment, the barriers they face in balancing care and employment, and the factors that influence their employment decisions. With an estimated 535,000 people with autism in the UK alone, this is an issue that requires attention. We have launched a pilot study to examine the experience of work for those who care for autistic children.

This PhD project will allow you to work within the research team following up the key concerns that are raised in the pilot study. This will involve detailed interviews of parents of children with autism, and developmental disorders other than autism, as well as cognitive and behavioural testing of parents and their children. In addition, the project will involve collecting views from Human Resource professionals and line managers about their experience of managing parents who care for children with autism. Data analysis will involve both quantitative and qualitative techniques.

THE IMPACT OF MOTOR DEVELOPMENT ON SOCIAL AND COGNITIVE OUTCOMES

In recent years, the impact of the development of motor skill on mental, psychological and physical health has been shown. Moreover, recently a crucial coupling between motor and language development has been highlighted from infancy, and motor skill at 9 months has been shown to predict cognitive achievement in the early school years. Furthermore, studies comparing children and adults have found that walking and balance are more affected by the addition of a cognitive task in children (e.g., Schaeffer et al., 2008; 2009), suggesting that motor control requires greater attention during development than it does in later childhood. Moreover, those children who need to focus even more on maintaining balance and control over their actions may not have sufficient attentional resources to allocate to cognitive tasks, and may therefore develop atypical ‘embodiment’ or interactions with their environment (Mareschal et al., 2007).

There is also increasing evidence for a link between motor development and the development of social interaction skills. Studies conducted by Campos and colleagues have advocated a direct link between the onset of locomotion and the social and emotional development of infants. Locomotor experience (crawling vs. walking) also affects the extent to which perceptual and social information is used to guide physical exploration of 12-month-olds when navigating a risky environment, and learning to sit upright and to manipulate objects affects how infants attend to and process faces. The critical role of the motor system raises a challenge for many psychologists who have tended not to address the motor system within research into cognitive development. This project would investigate the nature of the relationships between early motor, social and cognitive skills with later performance in these areas.

DEVELOPMENTAL COORDINATION DISORDER

Children and adults with developmental coordination disorder (DCD; sometimes referred to as dyspraxia) experience difficulty with motor skills in the context of good cognitive ability. The biological and cognitive mechanisms underlying this disorder, and the physical and mental health correlates of it are little understood. I am keen to supervise projects focusing on aspects of this order across the lifespan. For more information, please contact me with your areas of interest.