In 2019, OAR awarded a $2,000 Graduate Research Grant to Stephanie Joseph, a doctoral student at the University of Oregon studying special education. Her study examined the effectiveness of an intervention to reduce anxiety in elementary school-aged autistic children. Anxiety disorders are one of the most commonly re-occurring comorbid diagnoses of children with autism, affecting…
In 2020, OAR awarded graduate researcher Chelsea Anderson a grant of $2,000 for her investigation into the role of auditory attention in speech-in-noise processing in young autistic adults. Her research study examined how auditory attention skills affect the ability of the brain to process sounds, particularly being able to hear speech in noise. Auditory attention…
In November, OAR’s Board of Directors authorized funding for eight applied autism research studies in 2022. These new grants, totaling $313,712, bring OAR’s total research funding to more than $4.7 million since 2002. This article is the first of eight previews to be featured in The OARacle this year. Evidence-based practices are a key way to…
Recent data suggests that 40% of autistic children under the age of 7 have an anxiety disorder. Anxiety can exacerbate autism symptoms, such as worsening sensory over-reactivity and difficulty tolerating change, and contribute to social withdrawal and avoidance. Further, anxiety in young children is associated with a 3.5 times higher risk of anxiety and depression…
According to a report by the United Health Foundation released in early October, suicides among adolescents ages 15 to 19 jumped 29% over the previous decade, from 8.4 per 100,000 to 10.8 per 100,000. In March, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued new recommendations that call for pediatric health providers to screen all young people…
It is expected that the number of autistic youths transitioning from school-based services will increase by 123% in this decade. Current estimates indicate that about half of adults who receive services through developmental disability agencies spend their days in adult day programs, so it is important that those programs lead to positive outcomes for the…
In November 2020, OAR’s board of directors authorized funding for a one-year study of a telehealth parent training program that parents could access at home, Feasibility of Parent Training via Telepractice for Rural Families of Children with Autism. As the research proposal noted, between 50% and 70% of autistic children engage in problematic behavior with…
In 2021, Vanessa Bal, Ph.D., an associate professor and the Karmazin & Lillard Chair in Adult Autism at Rutgers, and Evan Kleiman, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the psychology department, led a one-year OAR-funded study, Developing Supports to Address Mental Health Needs of Autistic Students in Postsecondary Education, that examined an intervention to help autistic…
Since as many as 21% of school-age children in the United States speak a language other than English at home, it is likely that percentage includes a number of autistic children. It has long been assumed that exposing autistic children to two or more languages can exacerbate social communication challenges they may have. As a…
For this Research Review, OAR is featuring a study not funded by OAR, “[I] don’t wanna just be like a cog in the machine:” Narratives of autism and skilled employment, to highlight community-based participatory research. For this study, OAR Scientific Council member and the study’s principal investigator, Dora Raymaker, Ph.D., and their fellow researchers focused…
