A Marietta College student and Warren High School graduate is attempting to cover new ground in autism research, exploring an area of the disorder mostly ignored until now.

Heather Haught, 20, of Tunnel, a junior at the college, is entering the second phase of a research project aimed to form a better picture of what foods those with autism spectrum disorders prefer and how a diet can be made to cater to their needs and address eating problems associated with autism.

Often, children with autism are underweight, while many adults with autism are overweight or obese.

"I want to try to determine how we can get these people into a healthy weight range and have it be based in science," Haught said.

Haught had little background on autism when she learned a bit about it in a developmental psychology course at the college. She took that interest to assistant psychology professor Alicia Doerflinger, who had a background in the research of development of feeding behaviors, and the study was born.

The two found they would be virtual pioneers in their experiment, titled "The Effect of Food Preferences, Food Intake and Taster Status on Body Weight in Children with Autism."

"When we started to look at the literature, there was obviously not a lot of work done in that area," said Doerflinger. "Even though it's pretty well known that parents of children with autism have feeding issues on a daily basis, there didn't seem to be investigation into that in any depth. It was a little niche we could move into."

The lack of previous studies may be due to the difficulty of working with young children who are autistic or simply because with all the functionality issues related to the disorder, it may not have been a high priority, she said.

Haught, whose research is being funded by Marietta College's Investigative Studies Program, began writing proposals for the study in January and started the first round of testing on children ages 3 to 7 in May.

Several months of testing, during which the children - all Ohio residents, both normal developing and autistic - tasted salty, sour, sweet and bitter foods, led to some interesting results, Haught said.

"We saw a pretty much complete deviation in preference for food," said Haught. "Something like grapefruit, which is bitter, is something the normally-developing children didn't prefer, but it rated higher for those with autism."

The student researcher also found differences in texture preference among the two groups and, most importantly, she said, that the Body Mass Index of the autistic children was much lower.

The children were also tested for their genetic makeups, since genetics influence taste preferences.

The second phase of the research will have adult and child volunteers keeping food journals, as well as having monitoring of their sleep and other physical indicators.

"This can give us a lot of data we could potentially use to develop treatment and intervention programs," Haught said. "This is more of the real-life portion."

Haught is seeking volunteers for that portion of the study, and those interested can e-mail her at hmh001@marietta.edu.

Some of the participants so far have been very enthusiastic, she said.

"I think people are always anxious for answers with this disorder because they're so elusive," she said. "We don't have the answer for what causes this and what will make their children feel better."

As Haught is trying to provide answers to others, she's also learning how to conduct a research study using real subjects and with a real potential for valuable results, said Doerflinger.

"As we're developing this project, she's writing proposals, learning to interact with people as test subjects and all kinds of very important skills when it comes to research," she said. "She's already had the opportunity to take her data to an international meeting."

Haught said she plans to continue the study during her remaining time at Marietta College and likely into graduate school.

"I'm really interested in researching psychology and particularly children," she said. "This fits really well."