Mackenzie Stabile
Graduate Student, CALL Lab
Department of Psychological Sciences
Mackenzie's research focuses on pragmatic language use in ASD, with a particular interest in the extent to which differences influence communicative quality during naturalistic social interactions. Ultimately, she hopes that this research will both inform interventions and improve outcomes for individuals on the spectrum.
Elise Taverna, MS
Graduate Student, CALL Lab
Department of Psychological Sciences
Elise Taverna is a graduate student in Clinical Psychology. Her research interests broadly include the cognitive and environmental factors underlying language and social outcomes in individuals with autism spectrum disorders, as well as mechanisms of optimal outcomes in ASD. Previously, she worked with Sophie Molholm at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, coordinating neuroimaging studies of sensory processing and cognition in autism spectrum disorders and other conditions. Her MA project, currently under review, examines the interaction of fine motor and structural language skills in youth with autism spectrum disorder.
Mary Dieckhaus, MS
Graduate Student, ED Lab
Department of Psychological Sciences
Mary’s research focuses on the assessment of early communication skills in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders, as well as the implications of social experiences, such as camouflaging, on long-term mental health outcomes of individuals with ASD.
Jason Crutcher
Graduate Student, CALL Lab
Department of Psychological Sciences
Jason Crutcher is a graduate student in clinical psychology. Before coming to UConn for graduate school, he worked with Dr. Alex Martin at NIMH researching how structural differences in the brain relate to abnormalities in language and social cognition for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. His research interests broadly include language dysfunction in developmental disorders such as ASD. He is particularly interested in neural mechanisms underlying pragmatic language abilities for people with optimal outcomes from ASD. His MS project examines how structural language skills influence externalizing behaviors in youth with and without ASD. He is also pursuing a study of exceptional reading abilities in ASD.
Rebecca Thomas, MA, MS
Graduate Student, Early Detection Lab
Department of Psychological Sciences
https://rebecca-p-thomas.grad.uconn.edu/
Becca’s research focuses on symptoms that distinguish developmental delay from autism spectrum disorder in toddlers, as well as behavioral features that inform initial diagnostic impressions of ASD in toddlers and young adults.
Hannah Thomas
Graduate Student, CALL Lab
Department of Psychological Sciences
Hannah Thomas is a graduate student in Clinical Psychology. Her research interests include the neural mechanisms underlying language development in ASD as well as the neural and behavioral presentations of comorbidities in autism (e.g., anxiety, ADHD). Before joining UConn, Hannah worked with Dr. So Hyun “Sophy” Kim at Weill Cornell Medicine where she primarily worked on studies investigating predictors of school readiness in kindergarteners with autism and the neuronal and behavioral correlates of ASD and ADHD.
Rebecca Canale
Graduate Student, CALL Lab
CNC-CT T32 Fellow
Department of Psychological Sciences
Becca's research focuses on the neural basis of language learning in children with language disorders, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), with the long-term goal of using neuroimaging to facilitate the early diagnosis of ASD.