My research focuses on improving educational outcomes, especially for students with special educational needs, using evidence from developmental psychology, educational neuroscience, and neurodiverse populations. I examine cognitive development in neurodiverse populations in order to understand what cognitive abilities and strategies relate to successful performance. I also focus on the variability, overlap as well as individual differences in these groups in order to aid the development of effective educational training programmes. To understand how cognitive abilities develop over time, as well as when and how to intervene, I study abilities from infancy onwards. I am an internationally recognised expert on development in Williams syndrome and Down syndrome. Leading from my research on neurodiverse populations, I have focused my expertise to mathematical development in also typical populations and those with learning difficulties such as dyscalculia. I employ a multi-method approach, including observations, questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, systematic reviews, experimental tasks (preferential looking paradigms), standardised assessments (wisdom), and eye tracking methodologies, as a springboard to intervention studies and to obtain a rigorous understanding of development in neurodiverse populations, as well as how teachers and parents can improve learning outcomes for their children at home and in the classroom.