Do I prepare my child for the world, or the world for my child? While this is a very personal question with no one-size-fits-all answer, it is one that gets asked by guardians and parents of neurodiverse children. I myself do not claim to be an expert. I don't know how I would answer that question, but I imagine I would want as many resources as possible to help me and my child on our journey. Fortunately, there's a team working on such resources. But beyond compiling resources, this team is stepping back from assumptions and approaching neurodiverse research in an out-of-the-box way. In a way that calls for a wide shift in narrative, understanding, and perception. This is The Nurture Neurodiversity Project. Welcome to Research Outside of the Box, a podcast for unconventional, unique, and out-of-the-box research happening at Texas State, and the innovative research approaches faculty use along the way. I'm your host, Kamarie Carter, training specialist for faculty development. Thanks for tuning into this episode today. If you didn't get a chance to listen to our last episode, I highly encourage you to try it out, and I know we have a great episode ahead of us today. Joining us in the studio is Dr. Maria Resendiz, and I'll go ahead and let her give her introductions. Hi, my name is Dr.

Maria Resendiz, and I'm an associate professor in the Department of Communication Disorders on the Round Rock campus. So what does it mean to be a researcher in communication disorders? So this is something I give a lot of thought to. First of all, I think even the term communication disorders, that could be kind of its own podcast, and I've listened to several on that. But to be a researcher, I think really means to be out there learning ways to better serve the populations we work with. And it's going to look very different for different populations because the level of support that people need is different. I think also being a researcher in communication disorders means being in touch with the community, and the community means people we serve, families of people we serve, and other speech language pathologists, other speech therapists who work with these families. Because I do get the chance to go and do direct therapy, but it's not the main part of my job. And so really being able to have that communication with people who are speech therapists, see patients, see clients on a daily basis is really important for me because they're the ones who have a lot of the clinical information we need in order to bridge the research to clinical practice. Absolutely.

Thank you. I'd like to ask this question. Did you know that you wanted to be in communication disorders, a researcher in communication disorders when you were like six? No, no clue. What did you want to be? Oh, I wanted to be all kinds of things. I think I wanted to be an engineer at one point because it seemed like that's what really smart people do. And then I wanted to be a math major because my mom was a math teacher. It seemed like a nice compromise, not doing engineering, but still doing something kind of sciency.

And then my mom was the one who actually introduced me to the field of communication disorders.

And it was both she and my dad that really got me into it. When they first told me about it, I said it was the dumbest job ever. Little did you know, as you get older, your parents get a lot smarter. And so luckily, both my parents are very patient. My dad was an elementary school principal, so he knew the need that there was for a bilingual speech-language pathologist. And so he told me he was like, you should do that. And luckily, my mom went and called around and said, hey, this is what my daughter wants to do. She was smart enough to know not to take me with her. Because at this time, I was probably like 19, 18, 19. So she went, she found everywhere I needed to go, everybody I needed to talk to. And then I ended up doing it, and I loved it. I got into the research because one of the professors that I was, I guess I was in class one day, and one of the professors, Dr. Davis, said, if anybody wants to do research, come talk to me. And I said, okay, I'll go talk to her, which is not what I always do. But I went and talked to her and she said, oh, you're bilingual, you need to go talk to Dr. Benya. And so I went and talked to her, I started doing research with her. And that was when it really kind of all started coming together for me, because it was like, I was able to practice what I was learning in the classroom, I was able to see it with real live people. And so that's kind of how I got into the research part of it. And then I was like, don't let the door hit me on the way out. When I'm done with my master's, I worked for three years and thought, oh my gosh, we can do so much better for some of these, well, really for a lot of these kids. But there were a few in particular that kind of motivated me to go back. So I went back for a PhD and said, I'll never work at university. And then little did you know, yes. And so then I guess six years, five years later, there I was, there was a position open here. And my advisor, Dr. Benya said, there's a position at Texas State. I know you don't want to move because I was living in Austin. I went to UT Austin. So she encouraged me to apply. And I did. And I got the position and I said, well, let's see how this works out. And I'm so glad I did this because I love it. I can't imagine doing anything else. I love that.

And it sounds like your your parents were a big key factor in kind of your trajectory. Do you feel that way? Oh, yes, absolutely.

They were the ones who were they encouraged me. They were both first generation college students.

And so I tell my students who are first gen, I'm like, you can make such a difference in somebody's life because I've bought they're both the first ones in their families to go to college. And so it's just me and my sister that are not first gen college students in our big family. And so growing up, I would see everybody go to them and ask them questions and just kind of learn how to navigate this system that we're in.

And so when I was in college, my mom already had kind of some practice with helping people figure out what careers they wanted to do. She knew way more than any of the aptitude test out there that would tell you this is what you should be, because the speech therapist at that time wasn't even something that came up on the list of jobs that you should try.

And so she just my sister had gone to speech therapy when she was really little. And so my mom, she knew kind of my strength, she knew I wanted to work with children. She knew I didn't want to have a whole classroom of children. She knew I liked the one on one aspect of it. Although now speech therapists do a lot in the classroom as well. But she kind of worked with my strengths and really helped to direct me.

That's a that's a really impactful transition into the role that you're in now, I imagine so. Oh my gosh, absolutely. It drives so much of what I do because I know. And this is part of the reason that I'm so invested in getting both undergraduates and graduates involved in research, because my mom would tell me how when she was an undergraduate, she would ask and ask to be involved in different research projects that professors were doing. And they would just tell her like, no, either I'm not doing anything, or we don't have space right now. And I mean, she was willing to volunteer, she wasn't asking to get paid. So now I considered a huge privilege to be able to be in a position where I'm able to have so many students and provide students with that opportunity to be part of research.

Absolutely. And speaking of your research, can you tell us a little bit about it about what you're working on right now? Yes.

So one of the big projects I'm working on is nurture neurodiversity. And so with nurture neurodiversity, we're really trying to get information out there so that people can learn about autism and neurodiversity kind of in general.

Because up until this point in our field, so much of the research has focused on how people who are neurodiverse can appear to be neurotypical.

And what we're really trying to do is support that neurodiverse pride and viewing neurodiversity as a culture.

And so we really want to be a hub of resources that people can come to to learn more about neurodiversity.

And so we're currently working on an app with engineering to work.

It was focused more on different kind of populations at first. But at this point, we're looking at it more social emotional learning that can be used really by everyone. So maybe like as part of a curriculum at an elementary school level, because it talks about emotions.

And so that's one of the real interests that we have is learning how people who are neurodiverse who are autistic learn about emotions.

And so we went kind of straight to the source and had the opportunity to speak with a bunch of autistic young adults and also a few adolescents, and just really get some insight into how they learn about emotions, because there's a lot of literature out there that says people who are autistic don't know how to show emotions, don't know how to interpret emotions. I think what we're really learning is that it's not this trajectory that we think of with neurotypical individuals, it's a trajectory that's for autistic individuals.

And so one of my favorite quotes that I have heard people say is you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person.

And so really, it's a very heterogeneous group.

And so being able to get the different perspectives of the individuals has really helped to inform kind of where we're going to take our next steps with this research. So it sounds like you're shifting the narrative and making sure to include a wide variety of diverse voices.

Is that correct? Yes, absolutely. Because that perspective is so important, not just from a kind of us asking questions, but also having people who are neurodiverse involved at the kind of at the research formulation part of our project as well.

at the kind of at the research formulation part of our project as well. So like what questions are going to help inform people's understanding of what it is to be autistic?

What is it like to be autistic?

autistic? Since I am not, I cannot give you that perspective, but somebody who is can and there's, we use evidence based practice a lot in our fields. And so there are three prongs to that. One of them is the published research that's out there that's been peer reviewed. One of them is the clinical expertise.

the clinical expertise. So speech language pathologists who've been practicing for years, what do they notice that's working?

what do they notice that's working? And then there's also the client perspective. And so that's really the, I guess, kind of like the part of evidence based practice that we're focusing on here is getting that client perspective. And I think part of what it does is it really makes this reevaluate our role as speech language pathologists.

Because one of my students who did an undergraduate honors thesis was presenting it.

And some of the audience members were young autistic adults. And one of the questions that they asked her was, how come everything here is just like what people read about us, a lot of people don't ever actually get to meet somebody who's autistic, or they only see the stereotypes of people who are autistic.

And so she got to talk with some of them afterwards. And they talked to her about terminology, they prefer about the fact that they would like to have some kind of visual representation of them, whether it's an interview or something where people get to see them.

And so really just getting out there in the in the community.

And again, like if somebody's never met anyone who's autistic, if we can even show this diversity that exists within the population.

Oh, absolutely. And you had mentioned that y'all are working on an app and your goal is to be a hub of information. Do you expect that hub to expand beyond an app? Or do you expect that app itself to grow in a certain way? We expect to go beyond the app, like the app is going to be one piece of what we do, but there are going to be other resources on there that people will be able to utilize.

And we've gotten some great ideas from interviewing people about what would be helpful for them.

So people have talked about how I have to go look everywhere for sources of information, or I don't know where I can go that is going to be accepting of my child who is autistic.

be accepting of my child who is autistic. And so parents, I think one of the things that they really kind of contemplate and we've heard this expressed is it's like, am I going to prepare my child for the world? Or am I going to prepare the world for my child? And so I think also, when you're able to go and get a lot of information, you can make that you can make a more informed decision. And I always tell my students like in the end, it's up to the family, what they want to do, but we want them to have the information that they need in order to make the decision because for most, if not all the families, this is not a decision that they were ever thinking they would even have to make. Yeah. For folks who aren't in this field, what makes this research project out of the box or different or unique?

or different or unique? So one of the things that we, I guess, did or didn't do, I don't know, of the Texas State iCorps program. And so I was talking to the person who's now our mentor for our team, Dr.

Mikaela Vargas, and I was telling her how we're developing this product. We don't necessarily have a product we love, but we're working on it. And she was the one who told us we were in a really good place to do the Texas State iCorps program, which allows us to go out and interview people in the community.

And so the idea is to get that input from potential customers.

And so we did the Texas State iCorps program, got probably more information than we ever thought we would get.

And so we applied for the national iCorps program. We did over 100 interviews.

And the amount of information we got was amazing. And we didn't record any of our interviews.

We wanted to kind of create a safe space for people to talk to us. So a lot of times in qualitative research, when you're doing interviews, it's very important to record so that you don't have bias and what you're reporting so that people can go back and they can check, you can run it through programs, and you can find different themes.

And so after the fact, we essentially realized what we had was more like field notes from ethnographic research. And so after the fact, we went back and we looked at our notes.

And we almost had this sense of responsibility for doing something with it.

And so I think one of the big parts of the outside the box is we sacrificed, I think, like a kind of very pure research data collection method for something that really gave us more authenticity and something that gave us more of a more of a kind of trust, a setting where trust was set up so that people could talk to us. I think it probably also helped that our initial intent going in was not to do a big research project with it, but really just truly to learn about the community. And I think that authenticity comes through.

And so I think really kind of getting outside of that idea of this is what research looks like.

And being open to the idea of it can look so many different ways, because people would tell us that this was the first time that they had talked to somebody this much about it, they would double check that we were not recording and say you're not recording this, right.

And so I think that really helped us to gain more insight than we would have gained if we had gone in and said, Okay, we really need to record, we really need to get you to sign this with the autism community and researchers, especially when people who are autistic are not included in the planning stages of their of the research.

And so we, again, like from a pure methodological perspective, didn't really follow the qualitative research protocol.

But I think that we ended up with much richer information than we would have had we done a more kind of traditional approach.

Wow. Yeah. And like you said, I imagine shifting from what you had said is a pure research methodology to a more authentic one.

I'm sure that was a tough shift. What I mean, maybe what was it? Was it a difficult decision? Or was it a weird shift for you in research methods? I think at first, it felt really weird.

But then it also felt it was also very exciting, because I think we got the chance to talk to people who probably would not have talked with us, we got the chance for people to open up.

And so as we were going through the process, it really started to feel like, Oh, wow, like we've made the right decision. Because at first, it was like, you know, you think about like, are you going to be able to publish this, you think about peer review process, and you think about all that.

you think about peer review process, and you think about all that. And so at first, as we were looking at the interviews, it's like, are we going to be able to really do anything with this from a publication perspective?

from a publication perspective? But then, as we started to really think about how we could frame it, I think, and we'll see what reviewers think, but we really started to think about how we could frame it to show that this is a really great way to get some very raw information from people. And I love that y'all are challenging the idea of what is pure research methodology, and you're stepping not to plug the podcast, but outside of the box to, like you said, provide a more authentic, genuine, safe place for the people that you are working with in your research.

And I think that that that's really creative. And I think that that hopefully will yield some really exciting publications later. I'm interested to see where that goes. So thank you so much for sharing that piece.

Well, and I think our field kind of is going through this shift to and what is our role when it comes to working with autistic individuals.

And if we're gonna learn about kind of what to do, and if what we do needs to be different, then the kind of the traditional ways that we've looked at things is may not be the best way to do it.

Absolutely. I imagine there might have been some trial and error as you're getting this project off the ground. Do you have any examples of maybe some some things, some obstacles that you ran into as you were starting this project? So, I mean, there's always the classic you're applying for funding, and you're trying to get people to fund your research. And so that's kind of one. But since we've kind of gotten the ball rolling with that, I think one of the I suppose one of the obstacles is that some people still view our role as we need to help or we need to provide therapy to people who are autistic or that pragmatics or social interactions are always going to be challenging for them. And so really shifting that viewpoint to look at this more from a culture and being able to appreciate a culture just how in some cultures, the way people express happiness is different. And some cultures, different gestures mean different things.

And so with the neurodiverse culture, the way that different concepts are learned, the way that different things are interpreted is going to be different. But that doesn't mean it's something that we need to fix. And so I've noticed that sometimes when I talk about this, that that's something that people where I met with a little bit of resistance, because people want to fix things and nothing is broken in the individual.

And there's even evidence now to support that. In fact, some people who are autistic will say my brain is just wired differently. And there's now evidence to actually support that. And so one of the things is just kind of getting past this idea that there's always something pathologic about it.

Because if we look at it more from a cultural perspective, we can appreciate and value those insights that we get.

Because if we all thought the same way, it would be really boring. And we wouldn't come up with any kind of novel solutions. Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. Absolutely. You had mentioned that you use students in your research. Can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like?

tell us a little bit about what that looks like? Yes. So I oftentimes will at the either toward the end of my intro class or any undergraduate class that I get to teach, I always tell students because again, like that's kind of how I got into this, is if they want to be involved in research to please come see me because I mean, there's never a shortage of things to do in my lab. There are always plenty of tasks that students can work on.

And so I have a lot of undergraduates involved in research more from a scheduling time perspective, because our graduate students are really busy. A lot of their, a lot of the minutes in their day are spoken for. And so as undergraduate students do have a little more flexibility.

students do have a little more flexibility. And so one of the things that I will do is I will ask students, you don't, there's no like minimum time requirement, right?

students, you don't, there's no like minimum time requirement, right? I'm not like you have to volunteer 10 hours a week. If somebody can do one to two hours a week, then they can do those one to two hours a week.

If somebody has to do the work remotely, then they will be assigned tasks that they can complete remotely.

And so I really just want students to get the experience and to not have research be such a kind of separate thing because a lot of times students are like, I like this program, but because it's not focused on the research, it's focused on clinic. And it's like really both of those are so important because they work together. It's not an either or. And so if I can kind of introduce the idea earlier on, it changes how students think about it.

Because if they're already doing research by the time they're sophomores and juniors, it's just part of what they do as the program.

And it becomes less scary. And you see kind of some of the different ways that you can do it, it becomes more applied. And you had said that you use a lot of like younger undergraduate students to build up those skills going forward.

And I think that's really exciting. And I know your students were so excited about that they were just beaming ear to ear about the work that they get to do. Well, and then they get to go and present the work. So they've gone to conferences like SACNAS, which is the Society for the Advancement of Native Americans and Chicano's and Science. I got the letters wrong, but they've gone to SACNAS. So they got to go present their poster in Puerto Rico.

They got to present their research locally. When we go to write things up, they get to be co authors on it. So they really do become part of the whole research experience. It's not just like, here, go collect the data. It's like, I want you to see the process through. And then you have this nice product in the end that you can put on your Vita, you can go and show people you have something to talk about. What a great opportunity. Dr.

Resendiz has a group of very passionate students who are working alongside her on this research project.

They are energetic, enthusiastic, and excited to be a part of this opportunity. And I had the chance to talk with one of them. Here's a clip from our chat. My name is Angela Lozano, and I'm a senior at Texas State studying Communication, Sciences, and Disorders.

So in the research lab, I worked as a student researcher for the Blab Lab, conducting interviews over Zoom, recording them, clipping them, and identifying emotions in those videos for the app.

It's very fun. It's very different, very, very unique. We were lucky enough to have played a bigger role than I was expecting. We get to talk to the people that we are interviewing.

It's really fun because you were able to interview them, you're able to edit it, you're able to identify other people's interviews as well, the expressions of the participants in the other interviews. So it's been a lot of hands-on stuff, which has been really fun. I think it's unique because undergrads, you don't get a lot of experience in research fields, and we have been able to do so much research, which has been really fun, really, really insightful, really just being able to talk to lots of people, meet different people, and just, you know, just see what everybody else is doing. What directions, I'm going to shift a little bit.

What directions, I'm going to shift a little bit. What directions did your research end up taking that you didn't expect?

that you didn't expect? I know one of the things that we kind of dreamed of, but we didn't think we would be able to do very well, is to really look at this from an international perspective. And so we started with our interviews here with people in the US, but we've been able to expand out.

So we've interviewed people from Mexico, we've interviewed people from Guatemala, we interviewed somebody from Belize.

The graduate student I'm working with is Filipina, and so she can speak Tagalog, and so she has interviewed people from the Philippines. So we've been able to get this very international perspective.

And it's quite interesting because there are some similarities to the challenges that families face, but then there are some challenges that are unique, depending on kind of what's available in the different countries, financially, medically. And so the next step for her is she's actually going to a conference in Vietnam to learn kind, to learn more about what that looks, what autism, how it's viewed looks like in the Asian countries. So we've really, we were told by somebody, you really have kind of a chance to tell this narrative in some of these places where it's not talked about as much.

So I know you mentioned rewriting the narrative in some places, it's something you don't even talk about. And so if we can just introduce it in a certain way, hopefully we can get away from this kind of deficit ableist model of thinking into these are the strengths.

And let's view this from a very cultural perspective, and really value those diverse ways of thinking. And that does sound like a great opportunity.

It sounds like a very, it's a very important and it weighs heavily, I imagine, the responsibility that you have to, to really provide a platform for those voices.

for those voices. Do you feel that sense of maybe weight or responsibility as you're doing this project?

project? Oh, definitely. And I, that is part of the reason why we have sought out that neurodiverse perspective as we've gone along the way.

And definitely with that neurodiverse perspective, we that has had an impact on the different directions that we go in.

we that has had an impact on the different directions that we go in. And some of the interviews that we have done, the person will say, hey, if you need anything, like I love talking about this, I love advocating for the community. And so those are some of the people that we can go back to when we are, for example, forming an advisory board and say, hey, would you be willing to serve on our advisory board?

Or we're developing these research questions, can you tell us if these are good research questions?

good research questions? Or with our data, when we're analyzing it, this is what we're seeing, we don't want to just view it through a neurotypical lens, please give us your insight, tell us what makes sense. Tell us what does it make sense. Tell us what themes you're seeing. These are the themes we're seeing, let's come up with some themes together, instead of just like a rubber stamp at the end, where it's like, this is what we did, is it good? We really want to avoid that. And we want that, that involvement early on. And we've met some very interesting, very great people along the way. Yeah, it sounds like you've made some really impactful connections, like you said globally, during this process.

impactful connections, like you said globally, during this process. Do you have has that kind of made you think about future projects, future research opportunities?

of made you think about future projects, future research opportunities? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I know, since we have focused a lot on emotions, I mean, one of the things we talk about a lot is the way that people express themselves is different in different places.

And so if we're looking to be able to identify emotions, we're really going to have to go and collect data from all of these different countries, because what we create here is not going to work somewhere else.

And so again, that's kind of part of where the checking and I've heard the term cultural informants also, getting kind of that insight of, oh my gosh, I can't believe that that's what you all do.

And it's like, oh, like we didn't like you do things and you don't even think about it, right? Like, that's kind of part of communication, expressing yourself.

And when you get those different insights, you end up with this great meta awareness that really makes you think, why do we do that? And like, why would we try to teach somebody to do that? It doesn't necessarily make sense. You get out of your own head and perspective. Absolutely.

Great. Well, I'm curious, do you have advice for other researchers who are wanting to think outside of the box regarding their research? I always tell people that you do what you're passionate about.

And if you want to try something, try it.

And I will say, I'm guilty of not having necessarily been strategic in my whole tenure track process.

And that has kind of had its own implications. But I think at the end of the day, you have to find research that you're passionate about, you have to know what drives you, because sometimes the publications are accepted, sometimes you get funding and sometimes the publications are sent back and it's like, no go or when they're really nice, they might say, try another journal.

And then sometimes with the funding opportunities, it's like, we received many wonderful applications.

And so that part, if you don't have that passion or that drive behind what you're doing, it would be easy to get deterred. But if you're doing it and you know why you're doing it, that's what's going to keep you going. I love that. I think that's great advice. Do you have anything else that you want to talk about that you feel like we didn't get to today? Oh, my goodness.

I mean, I think it's just the importance of really kind of, like you said, like with the research and thinking about what you want to do. I think that part of my role is to really support students.

And yes, I have all this data. Yes, I have all this experience, but also allowing them to find where their interests can fit within the lab, because you don't really know what you don't know until you start learning about things that you didn't know about.

And so really kind of providing a place for students to come in to do research. But then also, I think part of what comes with having a research lab and having students is also this mentoring aspect, because it's not just like, I'm going to tell you how to do research, because you can get that from a research methods class. And those are very important classes. What you can get from being in the lab is kind of more of that one on one about a student who has this particular interest, or when you have something, and it sparks an interest in a student, then you can really get into helping them to learn about the research process, but in a way that's meaningful to them, because they're, again, it's different.

It changes the way that they see the work that they're doing, I imagine. Yes. And so I try to make it not scary. I'm not going to say that students don't come back and say, Oh, yeah, lots of tears were shed as I was writing my undergraduate honors thesis, or there were times during my thesis where I was just done. And I think that's kind of a normal part of the process. I do my best to try and reduce that, because I don't think that it should have to be hard.

reduce that, because I don't think that it should have to be hard. But there are parts of it. And I think that's just self imposed pressure, right? Like you want to do your best. And so I think kind of creating that mentoring with students who are in my research lab is a really important part, because I don't want them to kind of leave feeling like, Oh, that was a terrible experience. Or, Oh, yeah, that was great. Having somebody tell me what to do, but I wouldn't know what to do on my own. So I really like creating that community. I think one of the biggest compliments somebody gave me was they said that I run my lab like a family, so that people or students feel safe coming to me and saying like, um, I have a question about this, or is it okay to do this?

and saying like, um, I have a question about this, or is it okay to do this? And so I think that I think that's just to me like such an important part, because without the without the students, it wouldn't on it honestly wouldn't be as fun. Like I have great collaborators, but the students just bring in these new and fresh ideas.

And they have such diverse experiences that their contributions, I just really value them. Oh, I love that. And I mean, I attest to that from when I visited the lab, they they were so excited. And they were so happy to be there. They love the work that they do. And they wanted more, they just kept wanting to do more to learn more. And I think that attests to the lab environment that you've created.

Oh, well, thank you. All right. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Asendis for coming in today. I really appreciate it. It was great chatting with you getting to know about the work that you do. Because it's it's important work. It is work that is changing lives. And and that's what we're excited about. So thank you so much for coming in. Thank you.

Dr. Asendis would like folks to know that if anyone is interested in participating edu.

in autism research, please contact her at mr54@txstate.edu. Again, that's mr54@txstate.edu.

They need members of the autism community for their research team, and they would love to hear from you.

Thanks for joining us today. This podcast project is sponsored by Faculty Development using YouStar Studios at Alkek One on the hill in the bright and beautiful San Marcos, Texas. Thank you to all the faculty who are making amazing strides in your research. We hope you join us next time, and until then, stay curious and dare to research outside of the box.