In her third original piece for OAR, Jennifer Rose explains how music has impacted her as a person on the autism spectrum. Music has undoubtedly played a huge role in my life. From when I was five years old in a post-9/11 America hearing little kids belt out patriotic songs, to when I was thirteen…
In this blog post, which is directed towards kids with autism, Kerry Magro talks about what it is like to be Santa and have autism. This article was originally found on The Mighty. Make sure to share this article with your kids! To all the children with autism around the world, Hi kids, Santa here…
Laina Eartharcher is a self-advocate and a doctor who is working to fully embrace and love herself. In this post, which was originally posted on Laina’s blog, Laina discusses the internal struggle she is currently having. In writing about this struggle, whether or not to listen to what other people think, Laina provides valid viewpoints…
Ellen Stumbo is one of the employees at The Mighty, and in this post, she asked adults with autism to share what helped them manage the stress of the holidays. Ellen’s blog was originally posted on The Mighty. With the holidays upon us, conversations with my friends have centered around how stressful this time of…
OAR is proud to announce the winners of this year’s Applied Research Competition. At the recommendation of the Scientific Council, OAR’s Board of Directors authorized funding for eight studies starting in January 2019. These new grants totaling $228,036 bring OAR’s total research funding to over $3.7 million since 2002. OAR received an initial 152 applications…
Since 2002, OAR has funded more than 115 studies totaling more than $3.7 million through its Applied Research Competition. OAR hopes to build on this success in 2019, continuing its support of research studies that offer meaningful outcomes to individuals with autism and their families. At its annual meeting, this year held in Washington, D.C.,…
Whether you are a seasoned researcher or someone new to research entirely, it is easy to be swept up by the extensive amounts of information available on the internet. The area of autism research is no exception. A quick Google search of the word “autism” brings over 167 million results in seconds. Sorting through all…
In 2016, OAR awarded $2,000 research grants to Shalini Sivathasan, a Ph.D. student in educational and counseling psychology at McGill University in Canada, and Andrea Trubanova, a graduate student in clinical psychology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Both planned to study interventions that held the promise of improving facial emotion recognition. Sivathasan’s study…
When parents first learn of their child’s autism diagnosis, they may feel overwhelmed with the need to learn about the details and complexities of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They have to not only educate themselves about the medical details, but also the range of treatment options available. Understanding a complex disorder such as autism can…
I co-founded the Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE) with my friend and colleague, Dr. Christina Nicolaidis, in 2006. At that time, including a majority of autistic adults as co-researchers on the team and conducting autism research with autistic participants as self-reporters were such radical ideas that a grant reviewer told us…
