Previous Studies
Emotion Awareness and Skills Enhancement Study (EASE)
Study Coordinator: Shannon Porton (sloansa@upmc.edu)
Although there is clearly an urgent need for effective interventions to support emotional control and emotional well-being in ASD, the currently available options are very limited. Psychotherapeutic intervention approaches predominantly focus on the use of one specific technique called cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to treat one specific issue, e.g. anxiety in ASD. Issues such as explosive behavior, irritability, meltdowns, social withdrawal or shutting down, and feelings of sadness and depression are not adequately addressed by current approaches. We have adopted a broader approach that targets the underlying process that we believe contributes to all of these issues of emotion regulation.
Together with her collaborator, Dr. Susan White from the University of Alabama, Dr. Mazefsky has developed a new emotion regulation intervention for ASD called Emotional Awareness and Skills Enhancement (EASE). This research study is evaluating EASE in verbal 12- 21-year-olds with an IQ > 75 who struggle with handling their emotions.
Participants will be randomized to either EASE Therapy or Supportive Therapy. Both programs involve 16 weekly individual therapy sessions. There is no cost for this program, and we offer payments for completing the assessments. There is also an optional part of the study designed to help us understand how the brain responds to emotions. This involves viewing pictures and playing a game on a computer while wearing a cap with sensors and cables attached that measure brain activity called Electroencephalography (EEG).
EASE is closed to new recruitment at this time.
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Emotion Awareness and Skills Enhancement with Support Study (EASE-Team)
Study Coordinator: Kate Breitenfeldt (breitenfeldtk@upmc.edu)
We now seek to extend the benefits of EASE to those with a younger developmental level, including younger autistic children as well as teens and young adults with co-occurring intellectual disability (ASD-ID). Guided by a family advisory panel of parents of teens and adults with ASD-ID and parents of youth who completed EASE, EASE is being modified to best meet the needs of our new clients. We hope that improving self-regulation through EASE-Team will alleviate some of the most common comorbidities in ASD (e.g., sleep, psychiatric problems) and have cascading effects on overall health. This project will fill a void in evidence-based non-medication treatments for younger autistic kids as well as teens and adults with ASD-ID to support increased self-management in the transition to adulthood.
EASE-Team will involve 16 weekly therapy sessions that include both the client and a caregiver. There is no cost for the program, and we offer payments for completing the assessments. In addition to questionnaires and interviews, participants’ sleep will be monitored with a wrist-worn actigraphy watch.
EASE Team is closed to new recruitment at this time.
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Electroencephalography (EEG)-based Brain Computer Interface (BCI) Systems with EASE Participants
To address the significant need for emotion regulation (ER) treatment for autistic adolescents and adults, The Emotional Awareness and Skills Enhancement (EASE) Program was developed as a behavioral intervention technique by Dr. Carla Mazefsky. EASE is designed to improve ER. Behavioral intervention techniques are the most effective type of therapy for ASD, but the rate of generalization of such techniques from the clinical settings to real life is on average only around 48%.
There is a growing interest in complimenting behavioral clinical treatments with low-cost and easy-to-access technology-based tools to improve therapy effectiveness. However, it was shown that training through existing technology-based ASD intervention tools does not usually generalize to real-life activities due to the lack of authenticity in the responses from the individuals during training. In this study, Dr. Murat Akcakaya, PI, aims to develop an EEF-based brain computer interface (BCI) as an intervention tool to tightly complement the EASE treatment program for emotion regulation. The study will:
- monitor participant responses by analyzing EEG patterns associated with ER
- classify between distressed and non-distressed conditions
- identify different distress levels
- provide visual cues based on the increased distress levels to reinforce the participants to use EASE emotion regulation strategies i real-time during EEG-guided training
The EEG will also be implemented in virtual reality to provide more immersive interactions. It will be tested with 50 EASE participant throughout the project.
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EASE for All
Study Coordinator: Kate Breitenfeldt (breitenfeldtk@upmc.edu)
The EASE for All project goal is to gather information on viewpoints of emotion regulation and services developed to treat emotion regulation. This data will help us to better understand the needs of autistic individuals and their families in order to develop and implement treatment options for emotion regulation within the community. The study will involve interviews and/or focus groups lasting approximately 1 hour with each of the following three groups:
- Autistic Adults
- Caregivers of Autistic Adolescents and Adults
- Community Service Providers