About

Nameera N Akhtar is a Professor in the Psychology Department within the Social Sciences Division. Her research interests focus on early cognitive and language development, particularly how social and cognitive developments influence young children's understanding and use of language. She investigates infants' and toddlers' social-cognitive understanding and their motivation to connect with others, considering these factors fundamental to language development. Her work examines how young children utilize their social understanding in early word learning, even in situations where they are not directly addressed, using experimental techniques in semi-natural interaction contexts. Her studies demonstrate that young toddlers are highly motivated to understand others' speech and actions and attend strategically to social interactions. Akhtar's academic background includes a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Dalhousie University. She teaches courses such as Introduction to Developmental Psychology, Development in Infancy, Cognitive and Language Development, and Perspectives on Autism. Her contributions to the field include exploring how social understanding influences language acquisition and advocating for integrating autistic perspectives into autism science. Her research also addresses broader issues related to neurodiversity and social motivation, contributing to the understanding of autism and social development in early childhood.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Social psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Ideological Framing of the Palestine-Israel Conflict: A Corpus-Based Eco-Linguistic Analysis of Western and Middle Eastern Media Editorials

  Social science review archives. · 2025-05-09 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  The current study explores the newly surfacing area of ecolinguistics as a form of critical discourse analysis with respect to the ongoing feud between Palestine and Israel. The aim of the researchers is to trace out the ecological words and linguistic patterns in the specific conflict-related editorials of the Middle Eastern and Western newspapers, Al-Ahram and The Guardian, published during the period of October 2023 to January 2025. Much has been written on the cities destroyed, civilians killed, and infrastructure turned into heaps of rubble because of this catastrophic situation, but nothing significant has been done using Stibbe’s normative framework of ecolinguistics. This involves corpus-based linguistic analysis of the corpora of editorials using Sketch Engine software, highlighting the ecological word keywords, concordance, and collocations. The findings reveal how language encodes the stories we live by and defines our relationship with other species and the earth. Stibbe’s ecolinguistics approach with embedded cognitive stories has enough potential for future researchers to help people in the reinvention of societies along more ecological lines by making them aware of destructive human actions causing harm to all that sustain life on our planet.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Autistic Space: Definition and History

  2025-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Does device use harm cognitive functioning in early childhood? Exploring the effects on inhibitory control with 3.5-year-olds in the U.S.

  Early Years Journal of International Research and Development · 2025-06-27

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Electronic devices have started to take a prominent presence in young children's lives.The present research explored the relation between 3.5-year-olds' device use and inhibitory control (IC), a component of executive functions.The age represents the transitional year when many children begin to attend preschool.Thirty-two children completed two tasks (Simon Says and Statue) that measured their inhibition of bodily actions.Children also played with tangible and digital puzzles as a study context to observe their spatial play.Parents filled out a survey on children's prior experience with digital and non-digital activities and a questionnaire on children's characteristics focusing on persistence and restlessness.The results indicated that IC was associated negatively with TV-watching time on devices and positively with non-digital reading time but was unrelated to overall exposure to devices.In addition, IC was linked positively to completion of puzzles and children's persistence in spatial play especially with tangible puzzles.Together, the finding underscores the importance of considering the types of activities that children engage in with devices when examining the relation between technology use and cognitive functioning.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Autistic Space: Definition and History

  2024-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Short report: Can autie-biographies influence non-autistic readers’ views of autism and autistic people?

  Neurodiversity · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Autistic testimony can be used to both broaden and constrain current theorizing about autism, and to educate lay people of the experiences of (some) autistic individuals. One way to access this testimony involves reading autistic autobiographies (autie-biographies). Dinishak and Akhtar outline several potential benefits of autie-biographies, including questioning assumptions, counteracting stereotypes, and increasing understanding of autistic experiences. As a first step in examining whether autie-biographies can produce these benefits, we coded book reviews of 52 English autie-biographies for three themes (suggestions for research/policy; changed views of autism; increased empathy/understanding) and found evidence for all three. These results suggest that reading autie-biographies may benefit non-autistic readers. Lay Abstract One potential way to gain an understanding of autistic perspectives involves reading autistic autobiographies (autie-biographies). If autie-biographies influence readers’ views about autism and autistic people, then book reviews of autie-biographies should indicate changes in the review authors’ views. In this study we examined whether book reviews of autie-biographies: 1) contained suggestions for research and/or policy; 2) suggested changes in the review author's view of autism; and/or 3) mentioned an increased understanding of autistic experiences. We found that most reviews contained one or more of these themes, suggesting that reading autie-biographies might be an effective way to influence non-autistic people’s views about autism.

  PublisherDOI

• Autistic Autobiography

  2024-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Still Infantilizing Autism? An Update and Extension of Stevenson et al. (2011)

  Autism in Adulthood · 2022 · 30 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology

  Background: Stevenson et al. (2011) examined photographs and language used to represent autism on chapter websites for the Autism Society of America, autism charity websites, movies, television shows, fictional books, and U.S. new stories and found that they overwhelmingly used children to represent autism. Methods: Using Stevenson et al.'s methods, we tested the hypothesis that, a decade on, these same sources would now include more representations of autistic adults. We statistically compared our findings with theirs. Results: On the chapter websites of the Autism Society of America and in fictional books, the hypothesis was supported in that there were more representations of adults (19%-20%) than in the original study (5%-9%), but there were still far more representations of children than of adults. In movies, television shows, and U.S. news stories, there were equal numbers of representations of autistic adults and autistic children. Conclusions: These findings suggest a move away from infantilizing autism in some domains, but they rely on a narrow construal of "infantilizing": the underrepresentation of autistic adults in media. However, even when autistic adults are represented, they may still be infantilized in various ways. Future research will need to examine the impact of infantilizing media on both autistic and non-autistic people, and other ways in which these representations are limited (e.g., gender and race/ethnicity).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Integrating autistic perspectives into autism science: A role for autistic autobiographies

  Autism · 2022-09-08 · 11 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Autism science faces several conceptual and ethical challenges. These include fundamental issues such as how to characterize autism and the fact that research findings and how they are interpreted sometimes contribute to negative perceptions of autistic people. We argue that some of these challenges can be addressed by centering the perspectives of autistic people and focus on one way to accomplish this: having non-autistic researchers critically engage with personal accounts of autistic experience. We discuss some of the advantages and challenges of engaging with these accounts and argue that they can play a role in the reform of autism science. Lay abstract Autism science faces challenges in how to think about autism and what questions to focus on, and sometimes contributes to stigma against autistic people. We examine one way that non-autistic researchers may start to combat these challenges: by reading and reflecting on autistic people’s descriptions of their personal experiences (e.g. autobiographies) of what it is like to be autistic. In this article, we review some of the advantages and challenges of this approach and how it may help combat some of the challenges currently facing autism science by focusing studies on the questions autistic people find most important, counteracting stereotypes, and increasing understanding of autistic experiences.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Experiencing social connection: A qualitative study of mothers of nonspeaking autistic children

  PLoS ONE · 2020 · 22 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Psychology

  Autistic children do not consistently show conventional signs of social engagement, which some have interpreted to mean that they are not interested in connecting with other people. If someone does not act like they are interested in connecting with you, it may make it difficult to feel connected to them. And yet, some parents report feeling strongly connected to their autistic children. We conducted phenomenological interviews with 13 mothers to understand how they experienced connection with their 5- to 14-year-old nonspeaking autistic children. Mothers of nonspeaking autistic children represent a unique group in which to study connection because their children both may not seem interested in connecting with them and have limited ability to communicate effectively using speech, a common way people connect with each other. The mothers in this study interpreted a range of child behaviors-some unconventional, but many conventional-as signs that their children were interested in connecting with them, (re)framed child behaviors that could undermine connection as caused by factors unrelated to the relationship, and expressed several convictions that may help build and sustain connection in the face of uncertainty about the meaning of their children's behavior. Even though their autistic children may not consistently act in conventional socially oriented ways, these mothers reported perceiving their children's behavior as embedded within an emotionally reciprocal relationship.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Neurodiversity and deficit perspectives in <i>The Washington Post</i>’s coverage of autism

  Disability & Society · 2020 · 30 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Cognitive psychology

  Media representations can perpetuate stereotypes about marginalized groups. Autism is often portrayed as a series of deficits needing correction. Many autistic self-advocates argue, however, that their neurological characteristics represent natural genetic variation—neurodiversity—and that they are not in need of a “cure.” The current study examined articles about autism on The Washington Post website from January 2007 through December 2016. It was hypothesized that articles would contain more elements of the neurodiversity perspective over time. Each article was coded for its overall valence, four measures of neurodiversity, and four deficit measures. Mean valence and mean composite neurodiversity scores significantly increased over time, while the mean composite deficit score significantly decreased over time. While the data suggest positive trends towards the neurodiversity perspective, they also reveal that some aspects of the deficit view of autism did not change over this time period in this news outlet.Points of interestAutism is often portrayed as entirely negative, but it has been argued that autism represents a form of diversity (neurodiversity) that should be recognized and respected.The current study examined how autism was portrayed in an influential US newspaper (The Washington Post) from 2007 to 2016.Later articles about autism were more likely to use words like neurodiversity, more likely to highlight strengths of autistic people, and more frequently described accommodations for autistic people. They also focused less on identifying causes of autism but continued to use negative terms and very few articles contained the perspectives of autistic individuals themselves.Although some progress seems to have been made in the portrayal of autism, there is still room for improvement.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael Tomasello

  19 shared

• Janette Dinishak

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  7 shared

• Vikram K. Jaswal

  University of Virginia

  7 shared

• Malinda Carpenter

  University of St Andrews

  5 shared

• Katherine H. Herold

  University of Minnesota

  4 shared

• Elena Hoicka

  University of Bristol

  4 shared

• James T. Enns

  University of British Columbia

  3 shared

• JENNIFER MENJIVAR

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  3 shared