Brett Heasman

York St John University · School of Education, Language and Psychology

Flow states are heightened moments of concentration, motivation and enjoyment, leading to total absorption in the present moment. A striking parallel exists between flow states and phenomenological accounts of autistic daily life. We analyse the components of flow theory alongside autistic autobiographical accounts to explore similarities and diffe...

Employers’ knowledge about autism can be a key barrier to autistic people obtaining employment. The current study evaluated the efficacy of an online autism training program, Understanding Autism in the Workplace, in changing employers’ autism knowledge and commitment to inclusion in the workplace. Employers ( N = 129) from 22 organizations in the...

Supported employment initiatives have been shown to increase employment rates for autistic people who want to enter the workforce. Despite the success of supported employment initiatives in increasing employment rates, little is known about the first-hand experiences and views of those involved. In the current study, we examined the experiences and...

This chapter illustrates important social contexts for psychological therapists working with neurodivergent clients. We set out some core principles for working in a social justice informed way, considering the potential for oppression of minoritised clients and what it means to move beyond a deficit-coloured lens. In Chapter 1, social justice is c...

Masking entails hiding or concealing one’s traits during social interactions. Research suggests that masking is particularly common for autistic people, though many non-autistic people also conceal aspects of their identity. Existing research has identified the key motivations and consequences of masking. No research to date, however, has considere...

Background: A growing body of research has sought to understand autistic people's research priorities. Several of these studies have identified employment as a key research priority. Yet, there have been a few attempts to identify specific, actionable priorities within this area. Methods: Using an online survey, we asked 197 autistic people in the...

Employers’ knowledge and awareness about autism can be a key barrier to autistic people obtaining employment. The current study evaluated the efficacy of an online autism training programme, Understanding Autism in the Workplace, in changing employers’ autism knowledge and commitment to inclusion in the workplace. Employers (N = 129) from 22 organi...

Supported employment initiatives have been shown to increase employment rates for autistic people who want to enter the workforce. Despite the success of supported employment initiatives in increasing employment rates, little is known about the first-hand experiences and views of those involved. In the current study, we examined the experiences and...

Perspective-taking is a routine and seemingly intuitive part of our everyday social life, yet at the same time, it is a difficult phenomenon to describe, conceptualize, and enhance. This entry considers (1) ways of conceptualizing the primary elements of perspective-taking; (2) reframing perspective-taking as an interactional achievement rather tha...

Academic abstract: Social psychology's disconnect from the vital and urgent questions of people's lived experiences reveals limitations in the current paradigm. We draw on a related perspective in social psychology1-the sociocultural approach-and argue how this perspective can be elaborated to consider not only social psychology as a historical sc...

Autistic people face high unemployment rates. One reason for this may be that hiring processes are inaccessible. This study aimed to establish autistic people’s unique experiences of hiring processes in the United Kingdom, by comparing them to the experiences of non-autistic neurodivergent people and neurotypical people. Using qualitative and quant...

Background: Sensory processing differences are commonly experienced by autistic individuals, and some sensory experiences can greatly impact the mental health and quality of life of individuals. Previous research suggests that adapting the sensory nature of environments may improve individual experiences and engagement with these spaces. However, k...

Background: A growing body of research has sought to understand autistic people’s research priorities. Several of these studies have identified employment as a key research priority. Yet, there have been few attempts to identify specific, actionable priorities within this area. Methods: Using an online survey, we asked 197 autistic people in the UK...

This article examines 181 autistic adults’ views toward, and experiences of, requesting and receiving workplace adjustments in the UK. Using an online survey, we collected both qualitative and quantitative data relating to individuals’ experiences. While the majority of participants perceived workplace adjustments to be important, many were not rec...

Background: Sensory processing differences are commonly experienced by autistic individuals, and some sensory experiences can greatly impact the mental health and quality of life of individuals. Previous research suggests that adapting the sensory nature of environments may improve individual experiences and engagement with these spaces. However, k...

Lay abstract: Autistic people can find it difficult to find and keep a job, and fewer autistic people are employed compared with people from other disability groups. There is not enough research in this area, especially research that directly compares the experiences of autistic and non-autistic colleagues starting in an organisation at the same t...

Autism affects how someone makes sense of the world around them. About 1–2% of people are autistic. You might have an autistic classmate or family member, or maybe you are autistic. Autistic people might communicate differently than people who are not autistic. This means that it can be difficult for other people to understand what autistic people...

Background: Autistic individuals face challenges in the workplace, particularly related to social communication. Diagnostic disclosure may mitigate these challenges, but it also exposes individuals to potential discrimination. This study aimed to share the diagnostic disclosure experiences of autistic adults in the workplace to help employers bette...

Lay abstract: Despite possessing valuable skills, differences in the way that autistic people understand and respond to others in social situations mean that they are frequently disadvantaged in job interviews. We examined how autistic and non-autistic adults compared on standard (unmodified) job interview questions, and then used these findings t...

Perspective-taking is a routine and seemingly intuitive part of our everyday social life, yet at the same time, it is a difficult phenomenon to describe, conceptualize, and enhance. This entry considers (1) ways of conceptualizing the primary elements of perspective-taking; (2) reframing perspective-taking as an interactional achievement rather tha...

Do autistic people read autistic behavior in the same way as neurotypical observers? We consider evidence that suggests autistic-to-autistic interactions demonstrate enabling norms and question the possibilities for neurotypical researchers to learn from autistic social appraisal.

Research on how autistic people are perceived by neurotypical people indicates that disclosing a diagnosis leads to a positive discriminatory bias; however, autobiographical autistic accounts indicate that diagnostic disclosure often results in negative discriminatory behavior. We report on an exploratory study to compare people’s self-reported hel...

Research on autism, which is defined as a life-long developmental disability affecting social interaction, has focussed predominantly on how autistic individuals perceive and interact with others with less emphasis on the perspectives of their interactional partners. Yet autistic viewpoints have highlighted how other people are part of a two-way br...

Autistic people are neurologically divergent, yet approaches to studying autism are framed by neurotypical definitions of being social. Using the concept of intersubjectivity, which conceptualises a variety of ways of socially relating, we investigate distinctive features of how autistic people build social understanding. A total of 30 members of a...

The double empathy problem (DEP) refers to a “disjuncture in reciprocity between two differently disposed social actors” who hold different norms and expectations of each other, such as is common in autistic to non-autistic social interactions (Milton 2012: 884). With different dispositional outlooks and personal conceptual understandings, interact...

There is a false opposition between imagination and materiality, with the former being seen as ephemeral and subjective, while the latter is seen as 'real' and objective. This opposition tends to obscure the fact that imagination both relies upon very real and material technologies and also often has very real consequences. The aim of the present c...

Misunderstandings are social in nature, always having two sides. Yet the misunderstandings experienced by people with Asperger's syndrome are usually studied in terms of the individual with a diagnosis, with less emphasis on social relations. We use a two-sided methodology to map out misunderstandings within 22 dyads (n = 44) consisting of people w...

The aim of this chapter is to understand how the imagination of the self is mediated by cultural technologies, showing how major new inventions (such as language, writing, digitization) qualitatively change the ways in which we imagine ourselves. First, the authors look at how technology can support cognition in general and imagination specifically...

The contribution of qualitative methods to evidence-based medicine is growing, with qualitative studies increasingly used to examine patient experience and unsafe organizational cultures. The present review considers qualitative research recently conducted on teamwork and organizational culture in the ICU and also other acute domains. Qualitative s...