UT CHDR - The Autism Research Laboratory

The Autism Research Laboratory

Katherine A. Loveland, Ph.D., Director
Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Pediatrics, and Biomedical Sciences
University of Texas Health Science Center - Houston Medical School

The CHDR Autism Research Laboratory (ARL) specializes in research to advance understanding of the nature, causes and treatment of autistic spectrum disorders. Past research has included studies of:

Pre-verbal communication in children with autism
Adaptive behavior in persons with autism or Down syndrome
Social conversation skills in persons with autism
Story-telling in persons with autism or mental retardation
Emotion recognition and expression by persons with autism
Perception of social situations by persons with autism

For more information about these studies, please see our page on ARL past research. girl in lab

Current research at the ARL focuses on identifying differences in brain development in autism that may help to explain the differences in social and communicative behavior identified in earlier research.

Below is a partial listing of papers from the UT- Houston CHDR Autism Research Laboratory:

Loveland, K.A., Bachevalier, J., Pearson, D.A. & Lane, D.M. (in press). Fronto-limbic functioning in children and adolescents with and without autism. Neuropsychologia.

Loveland, K. and Tunali, B.: Narrative language in autism and the theory of mind hypothesis: A wider perspective. In S. Baron-Cohen, H. Tager-Flusberg, and D. Cohen (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from autism, pp. 247-266, Oxford University Press, 1993.

Loveland, K.: Autism, affordances, and the self. In U. Neisser (Ed.), The perceived self: Ecological and interpersonal sources of self-knowledge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, 237-253.

Loveland, K., Tunali-Kotoski, B., Pearson, D., Brelsford, K., Ortegon, J., & Chen, R. Imitation and expression of facial affect in autism. Development and Psychopathology, 6, 433-444, 1994.

Volkmar, F., Klin, A., Siegel, B., Szutman, P., Lord, C., Campbell, M., Freeman, B., Cicchetti, D., Rutter, M., Kline, W., Butjelaar, J., Hattab, Y., Fombonne, E., Fuentes, J., Werry, J., Stone, W., Jerbeshian, J., Hoshino, Y., Bregman, J., Loveland, K., Szymanski, L. & Towbin, K. DSM-IV Autism/Pervasive Developmental Disorders field trial. American Journal of Psychiatry, 1994, 151:1361-1367.

Loveland, K., Tunali-Kotoski, B., Pearson, D., Chen, R., Brelsford, K., & Ortegon, J.: Intermodal perception of affect by persons with Autism or Down syndrome. Development and Psychopathology, 1995, 7, 409-418.

Loveland, K., Tunali-Kotoski, B., Chen, R., Ortegon, J., Pearson, D.A., Brelsford, K., & Gibbs, M.C. (1997). Affect recognition in autism: Verbal and non-verbal information. Development and Psychopathology, 9, 579-593.

Loveland, K. & Tunali-Kotoski, B. The school-aged child with autism. In D. Cohen and F. Volkmar, Eds. The Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders 2nd Edition. New York: Wiley. pp. 283-308, 1997.

Loveland, K.: Toward an ecological theory of autism. (2001.) In J. A. Burack, T. Charman, N. Yirmiya, and P.R. Zelazo (Eds.), The development of autism: Perspectives from theory and research. New Jersey: Erlbaum Press. pp. 17 - 37.

Loveland, K., Pearson, D.A., Tunali-Kotoski, B., Ortegon, J., & Gibbs, M.C. (2001). Judgments of social appropriateness by children and adolescents with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 367 - 376.>

Loveland, K.A. (2001).Social-emotional awareness and self-regulation of behavior in autism. Invited lecture at colloquium on Typical and Impaired Emotional Development. Sponsored by the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS), French Ministry of Research, Program for Cognitive Sciences. Hopital de la Salpetriere, Paris, France.

Loveland, K.A.,, Bachevalier, J., Nemanic, S. & Pearson, D. Prefrontal-limbic dysfunction and the development of autism. Invited paper in symposium on “Neural bases of social behavior: Insights from autism.” Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, April 19 - 22, 2001, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Loveland, K.A., Nagy, E., and Pearson, D. A. “Projective storytelling in autism: Reflections on brain development, language and social-emotional understanding.” Paper presented at the Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, Charleston, South Carolina, March 2001.

Nagy, E., Loveland, K.A.,. & Reddoch, S. Initial direction of looking at still and video split images: a comparison of persons with and without autism. Paper presented at the Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, Charleston, South Carolina, March 2001.
K. H. Taber, J. B. Shaw, L. A. Hayman, K. A. Loveland, D.A. Pearson. (2001). Accentuated Virchow-Robin spaces in the centrum semiovale in children with autistic spectrum disorders. International Meeting for Autism Research, San Diego, CA. Nov 9-10, 2001.

Loveland, K.A., E. Nagy, D. Pearson, S. Reddoch, K. Dodds. (2001). Intermodal perception of emotion in autism. International Meeting for Autism Research, San Diego, CA. Nov 9-10, 2001.

E. Nagy, K.A. Loveland, D.A. Pearson, & J. Bachevalier. (2001). Relationship of age and VIQ to neuropsychological and social-cognitive task performance in autism. International Meeting for Autism Research, San Diego, CA. Nov 9-10, 2001.
Bearden, T.S., Pearson, D.A., Loveland, K.A., Shaw, J.B., Dodds, K.L., & Reddoch, S.L. “Functional differences between children and adolescents with autism with and without symptoms of ADHD.” 35th Annual Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (2002).

Hayman, L. A., Shaw, J. B., Loveland, K. A., Taber, K. H., & Pearson, D. A. Accentuated Virchow-Robins spaces in the centrum semiovale in children with autistic spectrum disorders. American Society of Neuroradiology Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC, Canada (May 11-17, 2002).
Nagy, E., Loveland, K.A., Potts, G.F., Pearson, D.A., Thomas, T.: The role of the prefrontal cortex in implicit categorization learning with socially relevant stimuli. Paper presented at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Orlando, FL, November 2002.

Shaw, J.B., Ferguson, L.E., Loveland, K.A., Pearson, D.A., Dodds, K., & Reddoch, S. Correlates of ability to undergo brain MRI unsedated following behavioral preparation in children and adolescents with Autism. International Meeting for Autism Research, Orlando, Florida, November, 2002.

Bachevalier, J. & Loveland, K. Early orbitofrontal-limbic dysfunction and autism. (In press, 2003).To appear in D. Cicchetti, Ed. Neurodevelopmental mechanisms in genesis and epigenesis of psychopathology: Future research directions.

Loveland, K. (In press, 2003.) Social-emotional awareness and the self-regulation of behavior in Autism: An ecological perspective. To appear in Typical and impaired emotional development, J. Nadel and D. Muir (Eds.).

Loveland, K., & Tunali-Kotoski, B. (In press, 2003). The school-aged child with autism. In F. Volkmar, A. Klin, & R. Paul, Eds. The Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders 3rd Edition. New York: Wiley.