Karen Bearss, PhD

Mentor

Lawrence Scahill, MSN, PhD

Background

Dr. Bearss is an associate research scientist at the School of Nursing. She received her PhD in clinical child psychology at the University of Florida, where she was also a research team member in the Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Group. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in clinical child psychology at the Yale University Child Study Center. Her career goal is to establish herself as an investigator in intervention research on young children with autism

Project Description

Dr. Bearss’s project, Development of a structured parent training program for young children with autism, involves modifying the RUPP Autism Network parent training manual for school age children so that it is appropriate for preschoolers and conducting  a pilot study to evaluate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of the manual in young children. The results will be used to support external grant funding for a large-scale randomized trial