Name: Emily Chau
Class Year: 2026
Major: Psychology
 
Internship Organization: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Center for Autism Research
Internship Title:   Student Research Trainee
Location: Philadelphia, PA

What’s happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!  

Experimenter and confederate protocol for a study I am currently doing

This summer, I am working as a student research trainee in the Social Attention and Language Lab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s (CHOP) Center for Autism Research (CAR). I actually started this internship in the Spring 2025 semester as part of Bryn Mawr’s Praxis Independent Study program, but a lot of my responsibilities in the lab have changed. In the spring, I mostly transcribed casual conversations between speakers and autistic or non-autistic youth to investigate markers of autistic speech. I am still doing this, but I am also starting to become more involved in the front-end part of the lab’s research. For one study, I am currently training to be a confederate to have conversations with autistic or non-autistic youth. Instead of transcribing researcher-participant conversations, I will now be part of those conversations. In that same study, I am also training to be a confederate where I will instruct autistic participants to do difficult tasks as part of the study procedure. I am really looking forward to interacting with participants since most of my spring experience was transcription and shadowing studies.  

Example of two audio files and their transcriptions

I have also been added to multiple other studies that span across a variety of other speech and autism-related topics. For example, I am reviewing and editing transcripts that focus on the experiences of mothers who were pregnant/gave birth during the COVID pandemic. Later in the summer, I may start reaching out to families of autistic children to ask if they will participate in a study related to an AI reading tool. In between all of these studies and tasks, I attend talks and similar events at CHOP that explore different topics and career paths in autism research. For example, we have a speaker series where lab alumni talk about their career after leaving the lab. In the next couple of weeks, I will be attending the Linguistic Data Consortium at UPenn, and I may be able to shadow a diagnostic visit at the main hospital. In all, I’m getting exposed to many different kinds of research tasks, clinical tasks, and topics here at CAR.

Why did you apply for this internship?  

An exam room that’s set up for a study task

I applied for this internship because the mission of CAR spoke to me personally, and I felt that my unique experiences would be a valuable asset to autism research. I have a brother with autism, and we went to CHOP as kids. Because of this, I have seen firsthand the outcomes of CAR’s research through the comprehensive care and supportive groundwork that CHOP has provided to my family and other members of my community who have autism. I wanted to give back to this organization while also serving the autism community using the analytical skills I have gained as a psychology major at Bryn Mawr. I hoped to exercise my research skills while doing meaningful work in a topic I’m personally passionate about.  

I also applied because I am pursuing a degree in social work, and I intend to keep serving this population. Even though this position isn’t entirely clinical or client-facing, I hope to gain a more holistic understanding of the experiences of this population as well as what kinds of research inform social work practices. 

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced at your internship? 

I think the biggest challenge I have faced is the one I am facing right now: the independent research project and presentation. As part of the summer program, student research trainees can choose to do an independent research project and do a short presentation about it in front of all the different labs and principal investigators at CAR. Even though I grew up with an autistic sibling, I find that there are still many aspects surrounding autism that I have yet to learn about, especially when talking to other members in the lab about their diverse research interests. It has been challenging to come up with and to research a novel idea for this project knowing that the people at CAR are experts in this field, but I have been proactive in reaching out to lab members who have similar research interests for guidance. Everyone on my team and at CAR has been very friendly and open to being asked questions, so I feel well-supported in my independent research project.  

Was this internship what you expected it to be?  

Because I started this internship in the spring, I thought that the summer would be more of the same. However, this internship surprised me because of how active and busy it is in the summer. The summer program for this internship is also a lot more structured than it was in the spring because there is a set schedule for events such as alumni talks, conferences, the Linguistic Data Consortium, study visits at the research center and at the main hospital, and the student research presentation day.  

Since the summer has started, I’ve been able to meet more lab members within and outside of my team. I was surprised by how approachable and considerate lab members were because I thought there would be a stark divide between lab members and student trainees. I feel that I can reach out to people within and outside of my team about autism research as well to discuss my academic journey outside of CAR.