Prisoners have high rates of physical and mental morbidity and of re-offending. There have been concerns that autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) may be overrepresented and under-diagnosed in this population. The aims of this study were to examine the effectiveness of an instrument which was developed to screen for ASDs in prisons and to establish whether male Scottish prisoners differ from community controls with respect to facial emotion recognition, as measured by behavioural testing, and differ on a neural basis while performing complex social judgements, as measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A total of 2458 prisoners (approximately 40% of the convicted prison population) were examined using the screening tool, of whom a further 127 were interviewed in depth and were assessed for facial emotion recognition ability. FMRI was used to examine haemodynamic changes in a small sample of liberated prisoners (9) during a social judgement (approachability) versus control (gender judgments) task. The screening tool had poor sensitivity (28.6%) and specificity (75.6%) and was not effective or useful in screening for ASDs in this population. Significant deficits in negative facial emotion recognition were found in the prisoner group in comparison with age- and sex-matched community controls. Region of interest analysis of fMRI data in the bilateral amygdala revealed significantly greater activation in the left amygdala in ex-prisoners versus controls during the social judgement task. The identification of these abnormalities in facial emotion recognition and social judgement are in keeping with current literature on antisocial populations. They may offer the opportunity for development of interventions aimed at reducing re-offending in the future.

Autism diagnoses are on the rise and part of the explanation is that society is making increasing demands on us and our brains. Autism is largely about how we perceive and interpret our surroundings, so there should be opportunities to support people with autism through thoughtful architecture to reduce stress levels and save energy. What is autism-friendly architecture and what might it look like?  In this project, I have designed a service residence (a type of LSS accommodation) for adults diagnosed with autism. By reviewing relevant literature and reference projects on the topic, I have tried to find keys on how to design a home that can support a person with autism. The overall objectives of the design are to reduce stress, enhance the individual's independence and support social interaction. The architectural aspects I have mainly worked on to achieve this are daylight, views, visual connections and boundaries and the organisation of the programme. Since people with autism have, among other symptoms, a different sensory experience often being hyper- or hypersensitivity to sensory input, an autism-friendly architecture is very much about designing for the senses.  The conclusion is that accommodation suitable for a person with an autism diagnosis can suit most people. It’s more about avoiding certain things that may be experienced as disturbing in different ways by people with autism, rather than adding special features.

Theory of Mind (ToM) has repeatedly been defined as the ability to understand that others believe their own things based on their own subjective interpretations and experiences, and that their thoughts are determined independently from your own. In this study, we wanted to see if individual differences in ToM are capable of causing different perceptions of an individual's interactions with human like robotics and highlight whether or not individual differences in ToM account for different levels of how individuals experience what is called the "Uncanny Valley phenomenon" and to see whether or not having a fully developed theory of mind is essential to the perception of the interaction. This was assessed by inquiring whether or not individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) perceive robotics and artificially intelligent technology in the same ways that typically developed individuals do; we focused on the growing use of social robotics in ASD therapies. Studies have indicated that differences of ToM exist between individuals with ASD and those who are typically developed. Comparably, we were also curious to see if differences in empathy levels also accounted for differences in ToM and thus a difference in the perceptions of human like robotics. A robotic image rating survey was administered to a group of University of central Florida students, as well as 2 surveys - the Autism Spectrum Quotient (ASQ) and the Basic Empathy Scale (BES), which helped optimize a measurement for theory of mind. Although the results of this study did not support the claim that individuals with ASD do not experience the uncanny valley differently than typically developed individuals, there were significant enough results to conclude that different levels of empathy may account for individual differences in the uncanny valley. People with low empathy seemed to have experienced less of an uncanny valley feeling, while people with higher recorded empathy showed to experience more of an uncanny valley sensitivity.

The current study investigated types of social support needs through a number of domains reported by parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) along with the relationship of these needs to reported parental stress. Female participants (N = 35) in the South Central Kentucky region responded to a number of measures regarding perceptions of their current stress levels on the Parenting Stress Index - Short Form (PSI-SF) and their perceptions on social support needs through a modified version of the Family Needs Questionnaire (FNQ). The results indicated that there was a moderately strong correlation between social support needs and parental stress. For exploratory analyses, the results indicated that several social support domains significantly correlated with parental stress. Further research was recommended to explore the seven social support need domains used in the current study with ASD families.