Predicting Language and Literacy Growth in Children With ASD Using Statistical Learning

Study Summary

The goal of this observational study is to test a reciprocal relationship between statistical learning and the development of language and literacy in first-graders with autism and their non-autistic peers. The main questions it aims to answer are: 1. whether children's statistical learning abilities can predict their long-term improvement of language and literacy skills in school; 2. how children's brains automatically learn patterns from speech and prints; 3. whether children's learning in the lab reflects the language patterns they have learned over the years from their native language. First-grade students will participate in the study twice across three months. During Time 1, children will complete * a battery of language, reading, and cognitive assessments * a series of computer-based statistical learning games both inside and outside of functional MRI scanner. During Time 2, children will complete a battery of language and reading assessments to detect the growth in three months. Researchers will compare the autistic and the non-autistic groups to see if statistical learning plays a similar or different role in predicting children's language and literacy growth.

Primary Outcome

The concurrent language skills will be computed by averaging each child's standardized scores across the TILLS language subsets and NIH Toolbox Picture Vocab. The composite score will range between 50 and 150. The higher score, the better language skills.

Conditions Studied

Interventions

• BEHAVIORAL Structural vs. Random sequences of stimuli
• BEHAVIORAL Intact vs. Degraded speech
• BEHAVIORAL Repeating 5-syllable nonwords or 2-syllable nonwords
• BEHAVIORAL Recall letter or syllable strings that either contain highly frequent bigram/trigram items or infrequent items according to English Corpus data.

Study Locations (2)