Hunter Mattern is a fourth-year graduate student in the Developmental Psychology program. Her primary research focus is on social interactions – how they unfold, how they differ across individuals, and how to support more meaningful connections for autistic adolescents. She works with Dr. Suzy Scherf and the Laboratory of Developmental Neuroscience at Penn State.
Hunter attended the University of Mount Union, where she received her Bachelor of Science degree in neuroscience. In 2021, she graduated from Saint Joseph’s University with her master’s degree in experimental psychology. Her research explored how autistic and non-autistic boys and girls differ in their social and emotional insight, which supports a newer understanding that autism may present differently in males and females. After beginning her program at Penn State, her master’s work was published in Molecular Autism, a top research journal. Hunter has been the primary research assistant on Dr. Scherf’s NIMH-funded Serious Game for Autistic Adolescents (SAGA) project, which involved conducting randomized clinical trials with autistic adolescents investigating the effectiveness of a serious game intervention to improve sensitivity to eye gaze cues. She presented initial effectiveness findings from this work at the annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society in May of 2024. She has also been investigating discrepancies in the way autistic adolescents and their parents report consistently within themselves over time, but agreement between parent and adolescent is low – highlighting the importance of including autistic adolescent perspectives in adolescent research. For her comprehensive exam and dissertation project, Hunter is reviewing literature on the role of eye gaze as a non-verbal social cue and investigating how autistic and non-autistic adolescents use gaze in live social interactions with a parent. She is also working with Dr. Dawn Witherspoon in the Context and Development Lab to gain experience with qualitative and community-informed methods.
Hunter is passionate about conducting research that not only advances scientific understanding of social interactions in autism but also has the potential to improve the everyday lives of autistic individuals. As a Strumpf Award Recipient, she will use the funds to support participant recruitment and data collection, provide time to focus on research and manuscript writing, and enable travel to share her work at an international research conference. This award will allow her to carry out her first independent project and take key steps toward a lifelong research career focused on improving our understanding of autism and enhancing the social lives of autistic youths.