University of Salford Research – Participants Needed

Posted on October 10, 2017 by

We received this request from The University of Salford and wished to share it on our website.

Participants Needed

We are looking for young adults aged between 18-25 years with a past diagnosis of high functioning autism spectrum disorder to participate in our six week intervention. We are seeking to recruit participants to pilot a new group cognitive behavioural social competence intervention. The six week intervention requires a commitment to therapy twice a week. Each week you will attend a 30 minute individually focused CBT session (which will require minor parent/caretaker involvement) and on a separate day you will attend a 2 hour group therapy session.

At the beginning and end of the intervention, you will be required to perform two simple, five minute social interaction tasks for the purpose of assessment. One of the five minute task will require you and one other person to play a game while being video recorded. In the other social interaction tasks you will have your brain monitored using a 52 channel functional near inferred spectroscopy (fNIRS) while holding a conversation with another person. The fNIRS is a small non-invasive devise that will be simply placed on the head similar to a swimmers cap for approximately six minutes.

If you have had a past diagnosis of High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder or Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, then you may be interested in participating in our study.

In this study we aim to:

Investigate if the therapeutic intervention is acceptable for high functioning adults that are on the autism spectrum
Investigate if the intervention has an effect on brain function
Investigate the relationship between brain functioning and ASD symptoms
Investigate if the intervention is effective at improving social competencies

For further information and/or if you are interested in taking part please contact

Lead Researcher: David Tate D.Tate@edu.Salford.ac.uk
or
Researcher Supervisors: Dr Clare Allely c.s.allely@salford.ac.uk and
Dr Linda Dubrow-Marshall L.Dubrow-Marshall@salford.ac.uk