News

Dr. Harrop, together with graduate students Orla Putnam (SPHS), Claire Klein (Clinical Psychology), research manager Elena Lemarche and faculty Brianne Tomaszewski and Laura Klinger (UNC TEACCH) recently published 20 years of statewide diagnostic data from UNC TEACCH clinics demonstrating that more females are being diagnosed with autism in the state...

Third year graduate student, Orla Putnam, presented both a poster and oral presentation at the 2022 American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA) conference in New Orleans. Together with SAGA Collaborator, Dr. Parish-Morris, she presented data examining how prosodic markers of speech vary been autistic males and females and non-autistic males...

This month we welcome our new research coordinator, Maia Karpinsky, to the Harrop Lab. Maia graduated this spring from Marquette University. She will be project coordinator for the SAGA Study, working directly with families and leading assessments. We are excited to have her join the growing team!  

After a long journey (!), we are excited to our study examining attention to non-social stimuli published in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorder. This study examined how autistic children, children with developmental disorders, and neurotypical children attended to non-social stimuli with varying properties, such as movement. We thank Dr. Claire...

This fall, 5th year graduate student, Jessie Goldblum, was awarded the Dashell Dissertation Award from the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. This awarded is intended to support Jessie’s dissertation studies and allows her to recruit more families for the TRAVEL study. Congrats Jessie!  

As a new semester starts, we welcomed EIGHT new undergraduate research assistants and two master’s students from Speech and Hearing Sciences. Welcome to the lab Anaam, Macey, Amanda, Kim, Gavin, Henry, Tyler, Kedrianna, Emma and Brenna! We are excited to have you as part of the team.  

Dr. Harrop presented at the Science of Autism Seminar Series, co-hosted by Southern Connecticut State University and Yale University. The panel was focused on sex differences in autism, with Dr. Harrop presenting data from UNC TEACCH. Dr. Harrop was joined by Dr. Fred Volkmar and Dr. Roald Øien. Thank you...

Dr. Tyler McFayden officially joined the Harrop Lab as our first postdoctoral fellow. Dr. McFayden completed her doctoral training at Virgina Tech and her internship here at UNC at the Carolina Institute in Developmental Disabilities. She is funded through a CIDD T32 Postdoctoral Training Fellowship and will be co-mentored by...

The SAGA study was officially launched in July 2022, opening our doors to (hopefully) 140 children and their families over the next five years. This study will be one of the largest longitudinal studies of autistic females. Participation in the study involves visiting our research lab in Carrboro four times,...

Our BIDD COVID Team published an article, Occupational Disruption: The Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Behavioral Inflexibility and Anxiety of Autistic Children, in The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy. The study reports the mixed-methods approach we took to capture how the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic impact...