Cheryl Dissanayake

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• Comment: The title of this page does not need the Professor title and should be changed to Cheryl Dissanayake. KeepItGoingForward (talk) 16:54, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Professor Cheryl Dissanayake AM, FASSA is the inaugural Olga Tennison Endowed Chair in Autism Research and was the founding Director.^[1] of the Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre^[2] based at La Trobe University, Australia. Professor Dissanayake is a developmental psychologist and behavioural scientist in the field of autism research^[3]

Cheryl attended St Bridget's Convent in Colombo from 1966 to 1973, and Bentleigh High School (now Bentleigh Secondary college) in Melbourne from 1974 to 1977. She commenced at Monash University in 1978, taking out an Honours degree in Psychology (1983) and a PhD (1992). Her postdoctoral research was undertaken in the Sigman lab at UCLA in the US from 1993 to 1995 inclusive.^[4]

Cheryl's early research focused on the development of attachment in Autistic children which challenged previously held notions that they were not attached to their primary caregivers. She joined the Department of Psychological Science at La Trobe University in 1996 where she established her autism research lab. Her comprehensive studies on the behavioural, cognitive and physical phenotypes of children with diagnoses of 'Autistic Disorder' and 'Asperger's Disorder' (as per DSM 4) contributed a significant body of research regarding the lack of distinction between these conditions which contributed to the single diagnostic label of Autism Spectrum Disorders adopted in DSM 5.

Her research on the early autism phenotype led to the first Australian community-based study to prospectively identify autism in infancy via the Maternal and Child Health Service (MCH).^[5] The success of this study and a replication study indicated that autistic children can be reliably identified and diagnosed by 2-years of age. In 2010, Cheryl helped establish the Victorian Autism Specific Early learning and Care Centre, adopting the Early Start Denver Model^[6] which she had introduced to Australia in 2009. Her related studies on early learning and early therapy outcomes in Autistic pre-schoolers indicated the impact of accessing evidence-based therapy early in life, serving to improve developmental outcomes and facilitate social inclusion into the school years. In addition to detailed behavioural observation studies, she investigated the physiological correlates of behaviour including the cardiac and attentional responses of Autistic children to social and emotional stimuli and undertaking studies of biological markers. Her research on growth in infants later diagnosed with autism provided the first evidence that autism is characterized by generalised growth dysregulation, extending this work to show that growth dysregulation is also characteristic of older autistic children and adolescents. Cheryl has investigated autism manifestations in boys with Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) and compared the behavioural and cognitive profiles in Autistic boys with idiopathic and comorbid autism as such comparisons cast light on the biological mechanisms involved in the origins of autism.^[7] More recently, Professor Dissanayake has engaged in studies of Autistic adolescents and adults focused on employment and mental health.^[8]

In 2018, Professor Dissanayake was elected Fellow of the International Society of Autism Research^[9] in its inaugural round, and served as President between 2019-2021. In 2021, Cheryl was awarded a Lifetime Membership by the Australasian Society for Autism Research^[10], which she helped co-found in 2011, and where she served as Vice President for 10 years. In the 2022 Queen's Birthday Honours, she was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to medical research, to tertiary education, and to professional societies^[11] and was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia^[3]

Cheryl married Peter J Wellington in 1988. They have two children (Noah D. and Mikael D. Wellington).