Perspective-taking

Today, I'm joined by Ashley Rodrigues, a graduate student in the School and Applied Psychology program at Western University, and the lab manager for the Living Organisms Learning Lab.

Ashley and I met when she presented research examining neurodivergence, perspective taking, and dating violence.

And as you'll hear, there are a lot of layers to this work.

We talk about how perspective taking can be understood through relational frame theory, what Ashley is finding when comparing autistic, ADHD, and neurotypical participants, and why those differences need to be interpreted carefully rather than reduced to a diagnostic label.

We also get into lived experience.

Ashley talks openly about her own ADHD and autism diagnoses, and how those experiences influence the questions she asks as an emerging, as an emerging researcher and clinician.

She, um, came up with the idea of looking at mechanisms of dating violence risk for undergrads.

She was particularly interested in cyber da-dating especially, so that initial study was really looking at what made people more at risk for being victims of dating violence and if there were any differences in online versus in person.