Future in Research Panel: Sensory Features and Anxiety in Autism

Описание: Part of a video series on Sensory Features and Anxiety in Autism: Implications for families and practitioners. View the full series here:
https://www.actcommunity.ca/education...

About the panel:
Moderated by Michelle Schmidt, PhD
Michelle Schmidt, PhD is the Executive Director of ACT – Autism Community Training. Prior to joining ACT in 2022, Michelle Schmidt was involved in public education in British Columbia, as an educator, school psychologist, and administrator. Most recently, Michelle served as Director of Instruction in the Surrey School District, where she was responsible for inclusive education and supports for students with diverse abilities.

Connor Kerns
Dr. Connor Kerns has conducted and published studies on a broad array of topics including the role of paternal age in ASD risk, the co-occurrence of childhood psychopathologies, and differential predictors of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy’s (CBT) efficacy for child anxiety. Her present research focuses on the overlap, assessment and treatment of anxiety and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Her ongoing projects aim to explore the varied presentation and phenomenology of anxiety in ASD and the implications of this variation for effective anxiety measurement and treatment. Dr. Kerns is also preparing to extend this work to the understudied area of traumatic events and their sequelae in youth with ASD. Another area of interest is the use of technology to facilitate the dissemination of empirically based treatments. Dr. Kerns is currently working to develop cost-effective, computer-assisted CBTs for youth with ASD and anxiety, interactive social stories to improve skill generalization in ASD, and video-enhanced ASD screening and educational tools. Her long terms goals include developing a parsimonious model of psychiatric co-occurrence to inform the design and dissemination of cross-diagnostic assessments and treatments that improve child wellbeing and development.

Patrick Dwyer
Patrick is an autistic PhD candidate in developmental psychology in the Neurocognitive Development Lab at the University of California, Davis. His main research interest is using various research methods, such as questionnaires, electrophysiology, eye-tracking, and cognitive tasks, to explore and understand sensory processing and attention in autism. More broadly, Patrick is interested in anything relevant to the well-being of autistic and neurodivergent people, and he has studied community perspectives regarding intervention and neurodiversity controversies. Patrick is a co-founder of the Autistic Researchers Committee at the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) and helped to found a neurodivergent peer-support and advocacy community at UC Davis. He maintains a blog, autisticscholar.com. On a local note, Patrick grew up in B.C. and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Victoria.

Nichole Scheerer
Nichole Scheerer is an assistant professor in the Psychology Department at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. Nichole received her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from Laurier in 2015. Nichole then completed postdoctoral training in the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Lab at Simon Fraser University, as well as the Brain and Mind Institute at Western University. Nichole’s research combines behavioural and electrophysiological techniques to investigate sensory processing in both typically and atypically developing people.

Anamaria Richardson
Anamaria Richardson is a (community based) pediatrician working in Vancouver. Prior to pediatrics she was a high school teacher. Currently, she works with many Spanish speaking patients given her Latina heritage, with children who have severe behavioural complexity, and with Indigenous communities both local and remote. Her interest in health equity has resulted in a research program that aims to better understand the needs of specific patient populations as well as identifying leverage points for systems change – she believes we can always do things better.

Camila Ranasinghe
Chamila Ranasinghe is the mother of a 15-year-old son with autism spectrum disorder. She has been running an Applied Behaviour Analysis home program for her son for 13 years, with involvement of Behaviour Consultants, Behaviour Interventionists, Speech-Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists. Chamila has more than 20-years experience working with children, as a teacher (English Language Learners) and an Early Childhood Educator.