Published on 12, July, 2020
Suppose you have the funding and technical skills to carry out autism research (e.g., questionnaires, qualitative interviews, MRI, EEG, behavioural experiments, virtual reality, etc). What kind of research question would you like to ask? What autism question do you think is still not well known, and what would be your solution to solving it, or extend current knowledge?
I would do research into the patterns of autism and its effects (direct or indirect) within families, i.e. through the generations and within the wider family once one family member is identified. This would be with a view to providing more effective information and support that doesn't stop with the individual.
i would also do research into the older generations of autistic people - what happened, what helped, what harmed etc - in order to build information and support for people with a very late diagnosis who have previously been overlooked and unsupported.
By the way, have you seen this? https://research.ncl.ac.uk/adultautismspectrum/
Newcastle University has an Adult Autism Spectrum Cohort to try to understand adults with autism and those that were diagnosed late in life.
I think both of these topics would be very valuable!
I think looking into the wider family would be very helpful. It's likely that there might be other people in the family with autism, but hadn't been identified, and it would be useful to have that information or opportunity to find out about themselves. Another thing is that in some cases, family members who don't have autism might often be overlooked, all the attention goes to the one with autism.
I really like the idea of doing research on older generations as well as people who were diagnosed very late, and those who had been previously overlooked and unsupported. I think it would not only be valuable to the older generation living now, but I believe even in the future, there still could be people who are overlooked, and they might feel even more left out if diagnosis is becoming more common.