Dr. Agnew is a faculty member at
Walden University and a reviewer for JSBHS
1.
Please briefly describe your current research.
Most recently, my research has
attempted to understand behavioral aspects of autism and develop behavioral
interventions that may improve the quality of life for children with autism and
their families. As part of this research, I have been involved with studies of
repetitive behaviors in autism spectrum disorders; biomarkers, such as salivary
cortisol; and behavioral interventions, such as therapeutic horseback riding.
In this last study, 116 adolescents with autism spectrum disorder were enrolled
in a randomized control trial, half receiving the horseback riding intervention
and half receiving a small group intervention at the same facility that did not
involve horseback riding. The primary outcome measure was aberrant behaviors,
but we also assessed social measures and communication abilities. The results
of this study indicated that 10 weeks of therapeutic horseback riding
significantly improved aberrant behaviors and some social measures in the
treatment group compared with the control group. Further analysis suggested
that the improvements in the aberrant behaviors remained for a period of months
after the treatment ended. These results suggest that therapeutic horseback
riding may be an effective behavioral treatment for children and adolescents
with autism spectrum disorders. This work has been published as:
Gabriels,
R. L., Pan, Z., Dechant, B., Agnew, J. A., Brim, N., & Mesibov, G. (2015).
Randomized controlled trial of therapeutic horseback riding in children and
adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of the American Academy
of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 54(7), 541 - 549. doi:
10.1016/j.jaac.2015.04.007
2
How did you come to be in this area of study?
Prior to becoming involved in
autism research, my research in graduate school involved functional magnetic
resonance imaging studies of developmental dyslexia. While at Georgetown
University, I developed a behavioral task in which subjects moved their thumb
in time with a visual stimulus while monitoring their brain activity using
functional magnetic resonance imaging. By comparing the neural activity between
subjects with dyslexia and neurotypical controls, I was able to show
differences in the patterns of brain activity between the two groups.
3.
What do like best about doing research?
What I like about research and
about neuroscience in general, is that there is so much about the brain that we
do not yet know or understand. This field is a very active one, and new
findings are published every day. These may be at the chemical level,
identifying chemicals that are important for brain communication and
development; at the level of brain anatomy, where researchers have just
recently discovered nearly 100 brain regions that were previously unknown; or
at the clinical level, such as my research into behavioral therapies for autism
spectrum disorders. Research is what helps expand our understanding of these
systems and conditions and, by doing research, we can help others.
4.
What do you dislike the most about doing research?
While research can be very
rewarding, research also can be very frustrating. Most biomedical research in
the United States is funded by the NIH, and grant funding levels have fallen
dramatically in recent years. That means that less research can be accomplished
and fewer students will be able to fund their graduate education or early
careers in research science. That is concerning both for research today and
research in the coming years, as people leave science for other fields. Beyond
funding concerns, research can be frustrating because experiments do not always
result in what you expected to find. But, that is the process of science. Even
if the experiment does not work out, it does often generate new questions to
address in the next experiment.
5.
Advice for new researchers who would like to be published?
Be detailed. Be persistent.
Taking those in order, science is a very precise field. You need to understand
the question you are asking and the measurements you are making. The history of
science is littered with experimental results that seemed to point to one
conclusion, but actually said something very different once the question was
better understood. So be detailed and specific about what you are asking and
what you are measuring. Second, be persistent. It takes a long time and many
attempts to have your grant funded or your journal article accepted. Personally,
I have never been successful on the first attempt at either. Just review the
feedback you receive and implement that into your next attempt. The feedback is
meant as constructive criticism to help you clarify your thinking and your
writing. I will add one more piece of advice for publishing your manuscript.
When you have your research completed and analyzed, start to think about where
you might want to publish. Each journal has a focus, so you need to identify
how you want to present your research and find a journal that publishes about
that topic and to the audience you think will benefit from your study. Then,
read several articles from that journal and work to match the style as much as
you can. Do they follow APA format, MLA format, or some other format for the
manuscript and references? How do they use headings and tables and figures?
Complying with the style guidelines of the journal is a good first step to show
the editor and the reviewers that you have paid attention to the details and that
they should take your work seriously.
