Carmel Sivaratnam
Monash University, VIC
Ian Scott PhD Scholarship
Mental Health 2011
Carmel completed her Honours Year of the Bachelor of Psychology in 2010 with the School of Psychology and Psychiatry at Monash University and was supervised by A/Professor Nicole Rinehart, Dr Kylie Gray, and Professor Kim Cornish. She was recently awarded an Ian Scott Scholarship from Australian Rotary Health as well as an APA scholarship to undertake a PhD in 2011.
Her project will investigate environmental and neuro-biological factors influencing emotion-processing in children with autism and children with traumatic developmental experiences in the Centre of Developmental Psychiatry and Psychology under the supervision of Professor Louise Newman and A/Professor Nicole Rinehart. Carmel’s research interests lie in delineating the core factors contributing to autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disorders which also entail impairments in social functioning.
SUMMARY OF PROJECT:
Environmental and neuro-biological factors influencing emotion-processing in children with autism and children with traumatic developmental experiences
Although research has elucidated different etiologies for the similar social and communicative difficulties faced by children with autism (Siller & Sigman, 2002) and those with traumatic developmental experiences (Pollak & Kistler,2002), a critical need remains to compare the neurobiological underpinnings of emotion-processing impairments in these two groups. Thus, our project aims to tease apart differences in early emotional experience between these two groups, including the influence of parent-child interactions and responsiveness in the observed socio-communicative impairments.
Findings will make invaluable contributions to current research which is still in its early stages of clarifying subtle differences in the underpinnings of social dysfunction in these two disorders. Findings will also allow the development of accurate diagnostic criteria of these two disorders which have such varied etiologies but similar manifestations in social functioning deficits.