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

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.

Conditions

• Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Language Development
• Literacy

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Structural vs. Random sequences of stimuli

Participants will see or listen to sequences of sounds and images either in a structured condition or a random condition.

BEHAVIORAL

Intact vs. Degraded speech

Participants will listen to an audiobook "Alice in Wonderland" in the MRI scanner. The speech is either intact or degraded.

BEHAVIORAL

Repeating 5-syllable nonwords or 2-syllable nonwords

Participants will listen to nonwords (either 5-syllable or 2-syllable) and then repeat them as accurately as possible in the MRI scanner.

BEHAVIORAL

Recall letter or syllable strings that either contain highly frequent bigram/trigram items or infrequent items according to English Corpus data.

Participants will read (orthographic serial recall) or listen to (phonological serial recall) strings.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Delaware

  collaborator OTHER

• Boston University

  collaborator OTHER

• Cornell University

  collaborator OTHER

• Northeastern University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Zhenghan Qi, MD/PhD · Northeastern University

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

DIAGNOSTIC

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

72 Months

Max Age

90 Months

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2024-01-13

Primary Completion

2025-08-31

Completion

2025-08-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations