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The post- 16 transition can be very challenging for young people with High Functioning Autism including Asperger's Syndrome (HFAlAS) and can also take a toll on their parents. However, little formal evidence of the psychological impact of this transition exists. This research explores the experiences of post-16 transition from compulsory education for those with HFAlAS and their parents. These voices are crucial in developing an understanding of the issues that arise during th is time. Seven participants were selected using purposive sampling, of which four were parents and three were young people with HFAlAS. The young people were aged between 17-18 years old and for each young person at least one of their parents was interviewed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with all participants ind ividually. These were recorded and transcribed. This enabled participants to share the aspects of their experiences that were most important to them. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyse the interview t ranscripts to produce a deep level of understanding of the transition experiences. Two participant groups were used to add breadth and richness to the data. Three overarching themes were identified from the interviews as follows: Managing in the Wider World, Knowing How to Support the Young Person and Making Sense of the Transition Process. Connections were made between these themes, re levant psychological theories and recent research . This study aimed to high light the challenges and support experienced by parents and young people with HFAlAS during this transition.

No description available.

No description available.

Unusual Sensory Experiences (USEs) are a significant and common issue in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). People may be over- or under-sensitive to sensory information in any of the sensory domains. These expenences can seriously affect people's lives, causing distress and correlating with impairments in a number of areas of functioning. These experiences have received relatively little attention in research into ASDs. The first paper reviews the literature from the last ten years for treatments for USEs and their sequelae. Results indicate that risperidone and massage therapy can be validly shown to reduce the severity of the USEs and their effects in other areas of functioning. The other treatments have equivocal or inconclusive results and so require more research. In the second paper nine adults with Asperger Syndrome (AS) were interviewed about how their USEs have affected their lives. Results indicated that these experiences had powerful effects in many areas of their internal and social worlds. The experiences could be distressing often leading to escape and subsequent avoidance of certain situations. They could cause rejection from other people. These experiences could therefore often lead to the person with AS becoming extremely isolated. Other experiences could be fascinating and lead to specific sensory abilities which if nurtured could be utilised in jobs or pursuits. These results give evidence for the central role USEs can have in many areas of functioning for people with ASD. Implications for services and future research are discussed.

Understanding and anticipating the behavior and associated mental/emotional states of mind of others is crucial for successful social interactions. Typically developed (TD) humans rely on the processing and integration of social cues that accompany other’s actions to make, either implicitly or explicitly, inferences about others’ mental states. Interestingly, the attribution of affective or mental states to the agent can in turn (top down) induce distortions in the visual perception of those actions (Hudson, Liu, & Jellema, 2009; Hudson & Jellema, 2011; Jellema, Pecchinenda, Palumbo, & Tan, 2011). The aim of this thesis was to investigate bottom-up and top-down influences on distortions in the perception of dynamic facial expressions and to explore the role those biases may play in action/emotion understanding.

Background: Social cognitive deficits are considered to be central to the interpersonal problems experienced by individuals with a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome, but existing research evidence regarding mentalising ability and emotion recognition ability is difficult to interpret and inconclusive. Higher levels of mental health problems are experienced in Asperger Syndrome than in the general population, including depression, general anxiety and anxiety-related disorders. Clinical accounts have described symptoms of psychosis in individuals with autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger syndrome, and a number of research studies have reported elevated levels of delusional beliefs in this population. Investigations of social cognition in psychosis have highlighted a number of impairments in abilities such as mentalising and emotion recognition, as well as data-gathering and attribution biases that may be related to delusional beliefs. Similarly, a number of factors, including theory of mind difficulties, self-consciousness and anxiety, have been associated with delusional beliefs in individuals with Asperger syndrome, but there is a lack of agreement in the existing research. A preliminary model of delusional beliefs in Asperger syndrome has previously been proposed, which needs to be tested further and potentially refined. The current study aimed to further investigate social cognitive mechanisms in individuals with Asperger syndrome and to explore potential links with the development of paranoia. Method: Participants with a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome were recruited through a number of voluntary organisations and completed screening measures, the Autism Spectrum Quotient and the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, to ensure their suitability for the study. Participants in the control group were recruited through the university and local community resources and were matched group-wise with the Asperger syndrome group for age, sex and IQ scores. The study compared the Asperger syndrome group (N=30) with the control group (N= 30) with regard to their performance on four experimental tasks and their responses on a number of self-report questionnaires that were delivered as an online survey. The experimental tasks included two theory of mind measures, one designed to assess mental state decoding ability (The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test) and one designed to assess mental state reasoning ability (the Hinting Task). The recognition of emotions was evaluated through the Facial Expression Recognition Task. The Beads Task was administered to assess data-gathering style and specifically to test for Jumping to Conclusions biases. The self-report questionnaires were employed to measure levels of depression, general anxiety, social anxiety, self-consciousness and paranoid thoughts. Results: The Asperger syndrome group performed less well than the control group on tasks measuring mental state decoding ability, mental state reasoning ability and the recognition of emotion in facial expressions. Additionally, those with Asperger syndrome tended to make decisions on the basis of less evidence and half of the group demonstrated a Jumping to Conclusions bias. Higher levels of depression, general anxiety, social anxiety and paranoid thoughts were reported in the AS group and levels of depression and general anxiety were found to be associated with levels of paranoid thoughts. Discussion: The results are considered in relation to previous research and revisions are proposed for the existing model of delusional beliefs in Asperger syndrome. A critical analysis of the current study is presented, implications for clinical practice are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.