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DR. PETER MUNDY Peter Mundy, Ph.D. is a developmental and clinical psychologist who has been working on defining the nature of autism for the past 28 years. His work in this area began in 1981 at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. At that time little was know about the characteristics of the social deficits of autism. His studies with collaborator Marian Sigman contributed to the current understanding that joint attention impairments are part of the fundamental features of the early onset of social deficits of children with autism. This observation has contributed to improvements in the early identification, diagnosis and treatment of autism. Indeed, many of the instruments commonly used for the diagnosis or early identification autism now include measures of joint attention, and early interventions often focus on improving joint attention development in children with autism.He currently is the Lisa Capps Professor of Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Education at the UC Davis School of Education and the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute. He is also the Director of Educational Research at the M.I.N.D. Institute. Prior to that Dr. Mundy was a Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami where he was the founding Director of the University of Miami Center for Autism and Related Disabilities, which serves over 3000 children and families. He is also the Founding Co-Director of the Marino Autism Research Institute at the University of Miami with Wendy Stone and Pat Levitt at Vanderbilt University. He is actively engaged in the study of the neurodevelopment of joint attention and social-cognition in young children with autism and typical development. In this regard Dr. Mundy is currently working on a book titled, Joint Attention and Our Sharing Minds: Attention and Social Cognition in Typical Development and Autism” to be published by Guildford Publications in 2008-2009. In the last ten years Dr. Mundy has also begun a program of research designed to advance the understanding and treatment of problems in the social and emotional development experienced by higher functioning children, adolescents and adults with autism. His interest in this arena of autism began in 1988 when he directed the psychological services for an inpatient adolescent ward at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA. There he worked with several very bright adolescents with autism who were also affected by depression, anxiety disorders such as OCD, as well as other cognitive and emotional problems. In 1998 he developed a laboratory to understand the bio-social processes that contribute to individual differences in social, cognitive and emotional development in higher functioning people with autism. In 2006 the National Institute of Mental Health provided him with funding to develop one of the first research programs solely devoted to understanding and improving the quality of life of higher functioning people with autism. Awards and Recognition
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