Coming Soon (summer 2025)! Autism, Social Identity, and Co-occurring Experiences of Neurodiversity and Diversity (ASCEND) Study
The ASCEND study is an online, longitudinal survey aimed at understanding how autistic emerging adults with multiple marginalized identities (e.g., gender, sexual orientation, etc.) handle stress and how that stress impacts their mental health.
Using Electrodermal Activity as a Biomarker for Dysregulation in Autistic Children
This project aims to understand the “under-the-skin” processes during emotional and behavioral dysregulation in autistic children. We are coding 180 videos of parent-child interaction to determine whether what we see behaviorally correlates with children’s parasympathetic nervous system responses via electrodermal activity.
The first paper published from this project:
Greenlee, J., Lorang, E., Olson, R. H., Rodriguez, G., *Yoon, D. M., & Hartley, S. (2024). Comparative analysis of electrodermal activity metrics and their association with child behavior in autism spectrum disorder. Developmental Psychobiology, 66. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22461
Risky Behavior and Mental Health in Neurodivergent Emerging Adults
This is a multi-site, online project that looks to understand the association between risky behaviors like substance use, binge drinking, and risky sexual behavior and mental health outcomes in neurodiverse emerging adults. We also want to know if certain social and cultural environmental characteristics modify these relationships.
Hayley Katz did the first poster presentation using this data at the Gatlinburg Conference (April, 2025).