Sophie Sowden

University of Birmingham, Psychology, Faculty Member

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I am a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Birmingham interested in social and motor functioning across the life span, particularly with respect to neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative conditions such as conduct disorder, autism and Parkinson's disease. I have an interest in creating international research collaborations, having recently acquired funding from both the Experimental Psychology Society and Universitas-21 to run two cross-cultural projects.

I am the lead investigator of the U21 Autism Research Network (https://www.u21autismresearchnetwork.co.uk/). This network brings together autism researchers from 6 U21 universities across the globe with the aim of making society and research more inclusive for autistic individuals.

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Julian Kiverstein

Academic Medical Centre/ Universiteit van Amsterdam

Marc Champagne

Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Shaun Gallagher

University of Memphis

Vittorio Gallese

Università degli Studi di Parma (Italy)

Shannon Spaulding

Oklahoma State University

Richard Cook

Birkbeck College, University of London

Ezequiel Di Paolo

Ikerbasque

Tore Nielsen

Université de Montréal

Ralph Savarese

Grinnell College

James Russell

Boston College

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Autism in Adulthood

Over the past two decades, there have been increasing discussions around which terms should be us... more Over the past two decades, there have been increasing discussions around which terms should be used to talk about autism. Whilst these discussions have largely revolved around the suitability of identity-first language and person-first language, more recently this debate has broadened to encompass other autism-related terminology (e.g., “high-functioning”). To date, academic studies have not investigated the language preferences of autistic individuals outside of the UK or Australia, nor have they compared levels of endorsement across countries. Hence, the current study adopted a mixed-methods approach, employing both quantitative and qualitative techniques, to explore the linguistic preferences of 654 English-speaking autistic adults across the globe. Despite variation in levels of endorsement between countries, we found that the most popular terms were similar- the terms “‘Autism”, “Autistic person”, “Is autistic”, “Neurological/Brain Difference”, “Differences”, “Challenges”, “Dif...

Dopaminergic challenge dissociates learning from primary versus secondary sources of information

eLife, Mar 15, 2022

Some theories of human cultural evolution posit that humans have social-specific learning mechani... more Some theories of human cultural evolution posit that humans have social-specific learning mechanisms that are adaptive specialisations moulded by natural selection to cope with the pressures of group living. However, the existence of neurochemical pathways that are specialised for learning from social information and individual experience is widely debated. Cognitive neuroscientific studies present mixed evidence for social-specific learning mechanisms: some studies find dissociable neural correlates for social and individual learning, whereas others find the same brain areas and, dopamine-mediated, computations involved in both. Here, we demonstrate that, like individual learning, social learning is modulated by the dopamine D2 receptor antagonist haloperidol when social information is the primary learning source, but not when it comprises a secondary, additional element. Two groups (total N = 43) completed a decision-making task which required primary learning, from own experience, and secondary learning from an additional source. For one group, the primary source was social, and secondary was individual; for the other group this was reversed. Haloperidol affected primary learning irrespective of social/individual nature, with no effect on learning from the secondary source. Thus, we illustrate that dopaminergic mechanisms underpinning learning can be dissociated along a primary-secondary but not a social-individual axis. These results resolve conflict in the literature and support an expanding field showing that, rather than being specialised for particular inputs, neurochemical pathways in the human brain can process both social and non-social cues and arbitrate between the two depending upon which cue is primarily relevant for the task at hand.

Sophie Sowden

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