Developmental psychologist who made important advances in autism research
The developmental psychologist Elizabeth Newson, who has died aged 84, challenged the orthodoxy of her profession by emphasising the importance of observing children at play and of involving parents in assessments of their behaviour. She eschewed standardised assessments in favour of watching children at play, while simultaneously carrying out interviews with the parents – whom she saw as part of the assessment team. Her methods, which stemmed from her passionate belief in the value of parental partnership and a holistic approach to diagnosis and intervention, eventually became accepted practice.
Working closely for much of her career with her husband, John, she established an influential research unit at Nottingham University, with a clinic using her interactive, child-centric approach. She also carried out a pioneering study of child upbringing, and became an international expert in autism.
Elizabeth was born in Highgate, north London, the eldest of four daughters of Richard and Mary Palmer. They were active socialists and close friends with members of a Jewish family. This led to them providing a home for a child, and later her parents, escaping persecution in Germany in 1939.
During the second world war the family lived in a remote cottage on the Horseshoe Pass in north Wales and later in Bristol, before returning to Dulwich, south-east London. Elizabeth went on to study psychology at University College London, where she met John. They married in the summer of 1951.
Shortly afterwards they moved to Nottingham, where John took up a lectureship, and they began a series of research appointments that led to them becoming joint directors of the Child Development Research Unit in 1958. There they embarked on their classic study of child rearing in 700 families. Influenced by an interest in anthropology, they pioneered a naturalistic approach of using semi-structured interviews and entering into dialogue with participants. A first book based on the research, Infant Care in an Urban Community (1963), led to three further publications examining the experiences of children at the ages of four and seven. Their works became standard texts for students of social work and psychology.
Elizabeth carried many of the principles that underpinned these studies into other areas of her work, in particular the training of postgraduate psychologists and a growing interest in childhood disability. From 1970 the unit focused on the training of educational and clinical psychologists. Her teaching style was inspirational and discursive, and she provided tireless support to her students.
From the 1970s onwards, Elizabeth's work increasingly focused on autism, influenced in part by her experience as a mother of a son with Asperger syndrome. When she was made professor of developmental psychology at Nottingham in 1994, she dedicated her inaugural lecture to talking about pathological demand avoidance syndrome (PDA), a subtype of autism she had identified and that is characterised by an avoidance of the ordinary demands of life. PDA has become increasingly recognised as part of the range of autism conditions.
Newson became an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in 1993, and was appointed OBE for her services to children on the autism spectrum in 1999.
More locally, she was involved with Norsaca, a Nottingham-based autism charity, and in 1970 was instrumental in setting up Sutherland House, a school for children with autism based on several sites around Nottinghamshire. She remained involved with the school as an adviser until 2003. Collaborations between her research unit and Sutherland House proved fruitful, leading to workshops for parents and siblings and a support package for young children with autism and their families.
She went on to establish what she referred to as her "retirement career", focusing on the transformation of the university-based clinic into a diagnostic service attached to Sutherland House, where we worked closely as joint directors. This subsequently became the Elizabeth Newson Centre.
One of Newson's strongest beliefs about her work was that it should "make sense". Many parents would attest to her astute observations and genuine personal commitment – as well as the accuracy of the clinical descriptions that helped them make sense of their child's behaviour.
John died in 2010. Elizabeth is survived by her son, Roger, and daughters, Carey and Jo.
• Elizabeth Ann Newson, developmental psychologist, born 8 April 1929; died 6 February 2014