Laurie Dickstein-Fischer

Dr. Laurie Dickstein-Fischer received her master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in school counseling and her PhD from Northeastern University in the combined counseling psychology and school psychology APA-accredited program. She is an associate professor in the psychology department. She is pursuing research in the area of social interactions with technology and how it can improve psychological interventions. Dr. Dickstein-Fischer is also an experienced clinician and has worked with adults of all age ranges, across a broad spectrum of clinical presentation and using a number of treatment modalities. She trained and provided psychological interventions at Massachusetts Mental Health Center (Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry), Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Columbia Valley Community Health Department of Behavioral Medicine. She also provides consultation at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), guiding engineering students to apply psychological concepts to robotic modalities for interventions. In particular, she has served as the clinical lead for a collaborative project with WPI in developing the PABI (Penguin for Autism Behavioral Interventions) for assisting in autism interventions for children. For more information about Dr. Dickstein-Fischer, please visit her faculty profile http://polaris.salemstate.edu/profile/ldicksteinfisc/

Associate Professor in the Psychology Department

• Dickstein-Fischer, L. A., & Saunders, J. (2021). Girls can be plumbers too: Using Bibliotherapy to challenge gender stereotypes in careers. MASCA Counselor’s Notebook 57(8), 6-8.
• Scott, K., Dickstein-Fischer, L.& Thomas, J. (2020). Mirror neurons contributions to the brain as a   social organ: Working with clients to teach emotional cues of others. In R. Miller and E. Benson (Eds.) The Neuroeducation Toolbox: Collaborative approaches to infusing neuroscience principles in counseling a psychotherapy. San Diego, California: Cognella Academic Publishing.
• Dickstein-Fischer, L., Scott, K., & Connally, J (2019). Potential Benefits of School Counselor Consultation to Enhance Student Social Emotional Learning. The Practitioner Scholar: Journal of the International Trauma Training Institute.  1(2019), 40-60. 
• Williams, C. & Dickstein-Fischer,L (2019). School Counselors' Perceptions of Necessary Attributes of Middle and High School. Nursing Educational Perspectives, 40 (1), 30-34. DOI 0.1097/01.NEP.0000000000000348
• Dickstein-Fischer, L., Crone-Todd, D., Chapman, I., Fathima, A., & Fischer, G. (2018). Socially assistive robots: Current status and future prospects for autism interventions. Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Health, 18 (5) 15-25. DOI https://doi.org/10.2147/IEH.S138753
• Williams, C. & Dickstein-Fischer. (2018). A National Study of School Counselors' Perceptions of  the Nursing Profession. Nurse Educator, 43(4), 191-195. Doi:10.1097/NNE.0000000000000476 
• Dickstein-Fischer, L. A., (2018).  Three simple strategies to decrease anxiety though school counseling interventions. MASCA Counselor’s Notebook 55(4), 7-9.
• Dickstein-Fischer, L. A., & Ogilby, A. (2018).  Social Media New Year’s Resolutions. MASCA Counselor’s Notebook 54(5), 5-7.
• Dickstein-Fischer, L. & Sott, K.(2018). Counseling Students who experience anxiety in the classroom, In C. Cox. & J. Jordan (Ed.), Clinical Interventions for Counseling Children and Adolescents: A Toolbox for School-Based Therapists and School Counselors (pp. 29-34), Columbia, SC: Create Space Publishing.
• Dickstein-Fischer L, Gandomi K, Pereira R, Fathima A,  & Fischer GS (2017). Interactive Tracking for Robot-Assisted Autism Therapy. In Proceedings of the Annual International Conference on Human Robot Interactions, ACM/IEEE, HRI, Vienna, Austria. https://doi.org/10.1145/3029798.3038390
• Dickstein-Fischer L, Fischer G. (2014, September). Combining Psychological and Engineering Approaches to Utilizing Social Robots with Children with Autism. In Proceedings of the 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Chicago, IL. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2014.6943710
• Dickstein-Fischer, L., Alexander, E., Xiaoan, Y., Su, H., Harrington, K., Huang, H., & Fischer, G. (2011, September). An affordable compact humanoid robot for Autism Spectrum Disorder interventions in children. In Proceedings of the 33nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1109/IEMBS.2011.6091316
• Dickstein-Fischer, L., Su, H., Harrington, K., Huang, H., Cole, G., & Fischer, G. (2010, August). Cable-driven elastic parallel humanoid head with face tracking for Autism Spectrum Disorder interventions, In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Buenos Aires, Argentina. https://doi.org/10.1109/IEMBS.2010.5626186

• Dickstein-Fischer, L. (2023, April). Use of bibliotherapy through a CBT lens to reduce anxiety for all students. Pre-Conference Workshop presented at the Massachusetts School Counselors Association, Newton, MA.
• Dickstein-Fischer, L. & Sott, K. (2023, February)Using Disney Films to Create Trauma-Informed Classrooms for students with ASD. Division of Autism and Developmental Disabilities Annual Conference, Clearwater, FL.
• Dickstein-Fischer, L. & Hains, R. (2019, November). Children, Gender Stereotypes, and Career Counseling: Media Literacy and Counter-Stereotypical Characters from a School Counseling Perspectve. Workshop presented at Northeast Regional Media Literacy Conference, Providence RI.
• Dickstein-Fischer, L. & Sott, K. (2019, November). Understanding and supporting children with anxiety in the classroom and beyond. Workshop presented at National Association for the Education of Young Children, Nashville, TN.
• Cook, A., Dickstein-Fischer, L. & Krell, M (2019, April).Best Practices in School Counseling Supervision and Consultation. Workshop presented at the Massachusetts School Counselors Association, Hyannis, MA.
• Dickstein-Fischer, L. & Chapman, I. (2017,November). Preventing burnout among applied behavior analysis therapists: Is technology the answer? Poster presented at Ninth International Conference for Association for Behavior Analysis. Paris, France.
• Dickstein-Fischer, L., Crone-Todd, D., Chapman, I., & Fischer, G. (2017,November). Do social robots have a place in the practice of Applied Behavior Analysis? Poster presented at Ninth International Conference for Association for Behavior Analysis. Paris, France
• Hermann, M., Goodnough, G.,Dickstein-Fischer, L., & Dockery, D. (2017, October). Ethical Guidelines for Counselor Educators in School Counselor Training Programs. Workshop presented at the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision Conference, Chicago, IL.