Autism Spectrum Disorder: Characteristics, Causes and Practical Issues

Jill Boucher is Professor of Developmental Psychology at City University in London.  Initially she trained and worked as a speech and language therapist. Within a few years, however, the need to better understand the brain, and those malfunctions of the brain that cause communication and language impairments, led her to retrain and pursue an academic career as a neuropsychologist. After some years teaching and researching at the University of Warwick, she moved to Sheffield University to supervise an existing vocational course for speech and language therapists. She subsequently played a critical role in developing a multi-disciplinary Department of Human Communication Sciences at Sheffield, where research and practice are equally valued, and mutually beneficial.  The conviction that practitioners and researchers must work collaboratively to improve the lives of people with ASD, and to help families and others who support and provide for them, informs the approach taken in the present book.