My upcoming talks for March 2026

My upcoming talks for March 2026

https://lnkd.in/g-M4hjXC

• 3/2/26: Guest Speaker at Berkeley's Autism Decal - The course I created as an undergrad student at Berkeley. Have loved returning as a guest speaker each semester since I graduated.

• 3/7/26: UCSF's 25th Annual Developmental Disabilities Update for Health Professionals. Talk Title: Flourishing and Mental Health For High Support Autistics

• 3/20/26: Proof Positive - Everyone Deserves Happiness Summit, a livestream event on the International Day of Happiness highlighting wellbeing and flourishing in the autism community. Talk Title: The Shape of Meaning. Awe and Autistic well being

• 3/21/26 IDCL International Council on Development and Learning International DIR® Conference. Talk Title: Rethinking Autism Through the Body: A Sensory–Motor Architecture of Autistic Experience

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/giving-voice/202410/how-reasonable-are-reasonable-accommodations-at-work

The ADA’s reactive enforcement model exacerbates the challenges faced by autistic employees.

 

Elite Rising Scholar Peer Reviewer Award

 

Dear Hari,
We are pleased to announce that you have been named an inaugural 2025 Elite Rising Scholar Peer Reviewer for Rehabilitation Psychology. We initiated this award for 2025 to specifically recognize the incredible contributions of peer reviewers who are at the graduate student or postdoctoral fellow level...
This award is particularly impressive given that you are outstanding in comparison to all reviewers – including editorial board members. Your commitment and service to the journal is remarkable and even among our best reviewers, you have stood out this past year.
We have included a certificate of appreciation to congratulate you on this distinctive recognition. We are very grateful for your service and contributions to our overarching mission to advance rehabilitation psychology research. We look forward to working with you in the coming years.
With sincere gratitude,
Anna Kratz, PhD & Paul Perrin, PhD
Editors-in-Chief
Rehabilitation Psychology

"Finding solutions for the most marginalized members ultimately benefits everyone." - Hari Srinivasan

Read on... https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/aut.2024.38246.pw

Lonely in a Crowd: When Being There Still Isn’t Belonging

Loneliness is usually imagined as being alone. But many autistic people describe something different—and harder to explain: being surrounded by people and still feeling profoundly lonely. That paradox is what my paper tries to make sense of

Preprint Link: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/rjeus_v1 

A map of multisensory illusions—and what they reveal about autism and ADHD

I recently wrote a Psychology Today piece [Why Perception is Not Just What We Sense] about a simple idea: perception isn’t something we receive. It’s something the brain builds. I used a few familiar illusions—the McGurk effect, the stream–bounce illusion, the sound-induced flash illusion, and the parchment-skin illusion—to show what happens when the building process becomes visible.

[Contributor 🔗 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/hari-srinivasan]

What I couldn’t fit into that article is the part I think about most: illusions aren’t one category of party trick. They’re a toolkit. Different illusions probe different “decisions” the brain has to make—about timing, about cause, about whether signals belong together, about what counts as part of the body, and about how much certainty is “enough.”

When “Just Try Harder” Isn’t the Problem

We tell students this story early and often: If you work hard enough, you can get there.

That message—usually called growth mindset—has helped a lot of people. It pulls us away from “I’m just not good at this” and toward “I can learn.”

But there’s a quieter question that doesn’t get asked nearly enough: What if I am trying—and the system still doesn’t move? That question is what my new paper is trying to take seriously

Preprint link: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/x7jru_v1 

Why growth mindset sometimes falls short

Neurodiversity 2.0. Contemporary Research Evolving Frameworks and Practice Implications

Thanks, NIEPID for hosting and to everyone who joined the conversation today. Lovely to see so many MPhil students joining from all over India. Recording at. https://youtu.be/q0ctpgproS4

Breaking the Either Or Trap. Why Autism needs nuance not extremes

Thanks, Chico State for hosting and to everyone who joined the conversation on nuance in autism. Recording at  https://youtu.be/h70I6msB7rA

 

Emotional expression should be seen as a human experience, not defined by disability.

Read Full Article at

 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/giving-voice/202409/caught-between-tears-and-stoicism

 

When AI Can’t Hear You, It’s Not Neutral — It’s Designed That Way

I’ve been thinking a lot about who gets heard by AI—and who doesn’t. We tend to talk about artificial intelligence as if it’s neutral. Objective. Just math and data. But for many autistic people—especially those who are minimally speaking or nonspeaking—AI systems don’t just fail sometimes. They quietly shut people out. That’s what my paper (currently under peer review) is about: something I call engineered exclusion

Link to the preprint:  https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/eahjb_v1

What do I mean by “engineered exclusion”?

Engineered exclusion is when technology predictably leaves certain people out—not because of a bug, but because of how the system was designed from the start.
Most AI communication tools assume a very specific kind of user:

About That Autism Barbie and the Headphones

A few weeks ago, there was a lot of social media posts on something that was being widely celebrated online: a new Barbie meant to represent autism.

It had noise-canceling headphones. It had an AAC device. It had flexible hands for stimming.

And I felt… conflicted.

That moment is what eventually became my new Psychology Today .