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…
As many as 18.5% of children in the United States are obese. Evidence suggests the percentage may be even higher among autistic children due to factors including unusual dietary preferences, decreased exercise, and use of medication that is associated with weight gain, among others. The guidelines and support that exist for preventing and treating obesity…
Roughly 70% of autistic children have at least one co-occurring psychiatric diagnosis, and over 30% have two or more. Rates of problem behaviors are also high, with 56% of autistic youth directing aggression toward caregivers and 30% engaging in self-injury. There is also growing evidence that suggests that rates of suicidal ideation and attempts are…
Autistic people often have complex healthcare needs that increase their risk of poorer health outcomes. For the roughly one-quarter to one-third of transition-age autistic youth who are minimally verbal and who are living in a low-income household, the transition from pediatric to adult healthcare is often tumultuous. In order to improve that transition, a one-year…
Early identification and treatment can prevent challenging behavior from escalating and becoming firmly established in autistic children. Decades of collaborative research in the United States has shown that parent-implemented behavioral interventions can help to reduce that challenging behavior. However, in China, where more than 2 million children have autism, evidence-based practices have not been systematically…
An estimated one-third of autistic people are minimally verbal, yet little research examines mental health treatment for this group. In 2019, OAR awarded a $2,000 Graduate Research Grant to Ashley Muskett, a doctoral student in psychology at Virginia Tech, to investigate the feasibility of implementing an observational anxiety assessment and concurrent physiological data collection for…
Obesity in children is a major public health concern; in fact, 18.5 percent of children in the United States are considered obese. For autistic children, evidence suggests the percentage is even higher. Factors such as unusual dietary preferences, noncompliant behavior, decreased exercise, social isolation, and frequent use of psychotropic medication associated with weight gain may…
