معرفی
Dr. Calum Hartley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University, specializing in autism research. His academic work focuses on communication and social-cognition in autistic children and adults across three primary research domains: word learning mechanisms, symbolic understanding of pictures, and ownership psychology.
His research on word learning investigates how autistic children identify, retain, and generalize new word meanings, demonstrating that autistic children can learn words as accurately as neurotypical peers under optimal conditions, though retrieval may be slower. In symbolic understanding, his work examines how minimally-speaking autistic children comprehend pictures, showing that picture qualities like color, detail, and iconicity significantly influence understanding - findings that inform interventions like PECS. His ownership research has identified differences between autistic and neurotypical individuals in ownership effects, including reduced sensitivity to authentic ownership history and differences in resource sharing behaviors.
Dr. Hartley's recent publications (2025) span visual attention during word learning, deception in autistic adults, neural connectivity patterns, meta-analyses of word learning, visual expertise effects, object valuation, and implicit mentalizing. His work shows a strong interdisciplinary approach connecting cognitive psychology, developmental science, and clinical applications for autistic individuals.
Dr. Hartley supervises multiple PhD students working in developmental psychology and has secured research funding for projects including "Deception in people with ADHD" (2024-2028) and "Deception in autistic adults" (2023-2026). He is actively engaged in public knowledge sharing through events for World Autism Acceptance Day, Pint of Science talks, and webinars for Pearson Clinical.
