OARacle Newsletter

In October 2024, OAR’s Board of Directors authorized funding for five applied autism research grants and one autism resource grant. These new research grants, totaling $288,930, bring OAR’s total research funding to $5.3 million since 2002. This article is the third of the previews to be featured in The OARacle this year.

Accessing and navigating campus life are challenging for many autistic students who attend college. They often face numerous barriers to belonging that are not well understood or adequately addressed, such as higher levels of discrimination, social rejection, and fewer social relationships. Challenges in executive functioning and difficulties with group work create additional obstacles. As a result of these challenges, mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, are more prevalent and chronic among autistic students.

A two-year OAR-funded study, “Exploring Autism-Friendly Campus Spaces: A Pilot Study at UAlberta,” will identify campus spaces that influence sensory and psychological safety for autistic students at the University of Alberta, Canada. Led by Heather M. Brown, Ph.D., the study builds on her previous research demonstrating that sensory and psychological safety on campus are pivotal to a sense of belonging for autistic students. This study will be the first to measure psychological variables—psychological safety, stress levels, sensory safety, and attention—in autistic students across different environments.

The goals of Dr. Brown’s OAR-funded study are to:

• Identify campus spaces that are autism-friendly.
• Map autistic students’ sensory preferences and feelings of sensory safety with regard to features like wall colors, lighting, and noise within specific spaces.
• Use eye-tracking technology to correlate how autistic students identify psychological and sensory safety with fixation duration and order of gaze on people, furniture, lights, etc. and gain insights into how these gaze patterns relate to their perceptions of psychological and sensory safety.
• Identify factors influencing autistic students’ sense of belonging in their university environments.

Dr. Brown is an associate professor of education at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on strategies to support the academic achievement and overall well-being of autistic children, youth, and adults. She spearheaded the Campus Belonging Network, dedicated to enhancing the educational experiences of autistic college students in Canada.

Methodology

The research team will recruit 30 autistic students at the University of Alberta. In addition, the team will recruit four autistic community partners to contribute to the study’s methods, analysis, and dissemination.

Participants will first complete The Belonging Questionnaire that asks questions about their strengths, autistic traits, executive functioning skills, and experiences with education and campus life. They will also complete:

• A questionnaire that identifies how they adapt to uncomfortable social situations without revealing their discomfort
• A sensory sensitivity scale to determine visual, auditory, and sensory (such as touch and temperature) reactivity
• A self-report anxiety measure specifically developed for and validated with autistic adults

Next, each participant will explore five different physical spaces on campus while wearing eye-tracking glasses and an Apple watch, accompanied by two trained research assistants, one of whom will be autistic. The spaces include an autism research lab, which is environmentally adapted to promote psychological and sensory safety; two libraries; and an indoor shopping mall and student union building, both busy and loud.

The eye-tracking glasses will capture video and sound recordings of each space, along with pupil diameter, an index of physiological arousal. The glasses use near-infrared light to determine the pupil-to-sclera location and a small embedded camera to record the visual mapping of the participant’s gaze. The watch uses an optical sensor to capture heart rate and can be connected to the noise-detection app, allowing ambient sound to be recorded.

In each space, the participant will sit alone in a comfortable chair for five minutes so a research assistant can capture their resting heart rate and pupil diameter. While the participant explores the space, the research assistants will record arrival and departure time, measure light intensity, and record a video of the space using an iPad to note the people present.

The participants will also rate their experience of the space by completing three rating scales:

• Psychological safety (e.g., “In this space, autistic students are likely to be rejected for being different.”)
• Sensory safety (e.g., “The artificial lighting is too bright in this space.”)
• Physical signs of stress (e.g., “My breathing is unsteady.”)

The final task in each space will be to answer open-ended questions so the research team can better understand each participant’s experience and the overall experience for all participants. For example, participants will be asked to explain how the sounds in the space impact them.

Evaluation

The research team will analyze the quantitative data, including space ratings and bio/behavioral measures, along with qualitative data from oral and written responses. The team will analyze sensory safety ratings and use them to group participants by similarity. During the qualitative analyses, autistic community partners will play a crucial role in refining the analysis through biweekly consultative meetings and coding tasks, ensuring that data interpretation aligns with the autistic community’s experiences.

Outcomes

The study seeks to inform institutional leaders about the need for action and support for autistic students by identifying strengths and weaknesses in campus design and providing guidelines for more inclusive environments. These guidelines will address issues in post-secondary environments for autistic students in order to enhance their quality of life and sense of belonging.

It also has broader implications for improving sensory and psychological safety for the general population, as sensory processing differences and marginalization affect many people.

Sherri Alms is the freelance editor of The OARacle, a role she took on in 2007. She has been a freelance writer and editor for more than 20 years.