Dr Kirsten Abbot-Smith

Reader in Developmental Psychology Research Excellence Framework Coordinator for Psychology
Email
k.abbot-smith@kent.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 (0)1227 823016
Dr Kirsten Abbot-Smith

About

Dr Kirsten Abbot-Smith specialises in child social communicative and oral
language development, with a particular focus on development in autistic
children. 

Key publications
  • McGuinness, L., Abbot-Smith, K. & Gambi, C. (2024). Seeing it in others versus doing it yourself: social desirability judgements and conversation production data from autistic and neurotypical children and adults. Autism doi: 10.1177/13623613241292172   
  • Abbot-Smith, K., Matthews, D., Bannard, C., Nice, J., Malkin, L., Williams, D., & Hobson, W. (2024). Conversational topic maintenance and related cognitive abilities in autistic and neuro-typical children. Autism doi:  10.1177/13623613241286610         
  • Malkin, L. & Abbot-Smith, K. (2021) Short report: how set switching affects the use of context-appropriate language by autistic and neuro-typical children. Autism, 25(8): 2418-2422. doi: 10.1177/13623613211012860 
  • Zajączkowska, M. & Abbot-Smith, K.  (2020). ‘Sure I’ll help – I’ve just been sitting around doing nothing at school all day”: cognitive flexibility and child irony interpretation Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 199 (Nov) doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104942    

Research interests

Dr Kirsten Abbot-Smith's current research focuses primarily on child conversational ability. One research strand aims to tease apart the roles played by factors such as intensity of interests, flexibility and language processing efficiency. Another research strand aims to uncover which aspects of social communication are linked to social inclusion and how these can be promoted within ‘whole classroom’ (Tier 1) programmes in mainstream schools. 

Teaching

  • PSYC5800: Advanced Developmental Psychology (3rd Year)
  • PSYC6160: Language and Communication    

Supervision

Current PhD students:
First supervisor
Second supervisor
Past PhD students:
  • Louise Malkin (first supervisor): The social use of language in autistic children
  • Maria Zajaczkowska (first supervisor): The cognitive underpinnings of irony interpretation by children
  • Nera Bozin (second supervisor)
  • Katie Carpenter (second supervisor)
  • Julia Landsiedel (second supervisor)
  • Aimilia Kallitsounaki (second supervisor)
Please get in touch to discuss research supervision for PhD theses or postdoctoral fellowships on topics related to child conversational ability, social communication (and relationships with RRBs) in autism or school-based interventions to enhance child oral language ability.

Professional

  • Associate Editor, First Language (from January 2017)
  • ESRC Peer Review College
Grants and Awards
Jan 2024 – Jan 2026Abbot-Smith (PI), Sturrock (CI), Matthews (CI), Bannard (CI), Dockrell (CI)"Developing a classroom intervention to improve conversation skills in primary schools." Nuffield Foundation£195,447
Oct 2021 – Sept 2026K Abbot-Smith (PI), S Leekam (CI), M Forrester (CI) and D Matthews (CI)Leverhulme Trust
"The cognitive constraints on children’s ability to manage a conversation topic" Leverhulme Trust		£328, 544
Jan – July 2021K Abbot-Smith
"Teaching teachers to teach conversation" HSS Division Seed Fund		£3000
Sept 2020 – Aug 2022K Abbot-Smith (PI), M Forrester (CI) and D Matthews (CI)
British Academy
Impact of speech rate and cognitive load on children’s conversational ability		£9,954
Jan 2019 – Jan 2021K Abbot-Smith
Psychology Seed Fund (Match Funding)
Factors associated with the quality of conversation skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder		£1,928
Jan 2019 – Jan 2021K Abbot-Smith
Kent Health Strategic Research Development Fund
Factors associated with the quality of conversation skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder		£2,908
Jul 2017 - Jul 2018K Abbot-Smith, D Williams (CI)
University of Kent Social Sciences Faculty Research Fund
What enables children to have good conversation skills?		£4,787.60
Dec 2014 - Dec 2015K Abbot-Smith, D Williams (CI)University of Kent Social Sciences Faculty Research Fund
The role of social shared experience in how typically-developing children and children with ASD interpret linguistic requests		£4,986
2013-2016K Abbot-Smith, C Floccia (PI), A Cattani (Plymouth), J Goslin (Plymouth), L White (Plymouth), K Plunkett (Oxford), C Rowland (Liverpool), A Krott (Birmingham), D Mills (Bangor)
ESRC (via University of Plymouth)
Lexicon development in bilingual toddlers		£3,416
2011K Abbot-Smith
University of Kent Social Sciences Faculty Research Fund
Relative action salience: when three-year-olds can and can’t learn words for actions		£1,000
2011K Abbot-Smith
British Academy Grant to attend the 12th International Congress for the Study of Child Language		£500
2010-12K Abbot-Smith, C Rowland, J Pine
ESRC
The role of the agent in sentence comprehension by preschool children		£98,554
2010K Abbot-Smith
Nufflield Foundation
Do children find it easier to learn verb meanings for ‘prototypically’ causative events?		£7,461
2007-09K Abbot-Smith
British Academy Small Grant
Interpretation of basic word order in Italian pre-school children		£7,310
 
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