Graduate Student, Aaron Dallman, was recently awarded an Organization for Autism Research Graduate Research Award to support his dissertation research. He is using EMA – ecological momentary assessment – to understand the relationship between context and emotions. EMA provides a great way to study in the moment emotions through quick surveys sent via text throughout the day. … Read more

We recently had a paper published in a special issue of Advances in Autism focusing on Women, Girls and ASD. The paper, led by Sallie Nowell, examined whether their were sex differences in parent reported circumscribed interests. We found that while these behaviors did not differ in their frequency or intensity, the content of them … Read more

Our paper “Visual Attention to Faces: Sex Differences in Autism Spectrum Disorder” was recently accepted for publication in Molecular Autism. In this study, we used eye tracking to quantify visual attention to faces within scenes that varied in their social richness (we characterized them as socially lean and socially rich). We found that when scenes … Read more

Dr Harrop was part of a team of researchers recently awarded a UNC Pilot Sleep Grant to study family management of sleep problems in Down Syndrome. The study will be led by Dr. Marcia Van Riper in the School of Nursing.

Undergraduate research assistant, Emma McQueen, has been awarded an Autism Science Foundation Undergraduate Summer Research Grant. Emma will be funded over the summer to work in the Harrop Lab and conduct her own independent research project focused on executive functioning in ADHD and ASD. Read more about here project here. Congrats Emma!

  The Harrop Lab was busy at the 2019 International Society for Autism Research Conference in Montreal. Former research assistant, Desiree Jones (now a graduate student at UT Dallas), presented data from our ASF-funded eye tracking study that considered how gender effects attention in ASD. Graduate student, Aaron Dallman, presented data from Project BIDD on … Read more

Graduate student, Aaron Dallman, chaired a Graduate Student Symposium at the 52nd Annual Gatlinburg Conference of Research and Theory in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities in San Antonio. The symposium, organized by Aaron, featured graduate student talks from UNC, UCLA and University of Alabama on the theme of the appropriateness of measures for individuals with Down … Read more

Dr. Harrop was recently interviewed by Spectrum News about the gender bias in ASD research studies and what our lab is trying to do about it! The article was also published on The Atlantic. The full article can be accessed here.

March 24, 2019 Graduate student, Aaron Dallman, presented a poster entitled “Affective expression, regulation and executive functioning in Autism: The role of cognitive flexibility and inhibition” at the Biennial Society for Research in Child Development Conference in Baltimore. Aaron’s poster utilized data from Project BIDD and used path analysis to test the relationships between executive … Read more

March 2019 In February, Dr. Harrop and her family welcomed their new daughter to the world. Baby L. has already taken part in two studies and will no doubt become an assessment practice guinea pig like her older sister, H!