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

Status: Recruiting
Location: See all (2) locations...
Intervention Type: Behavioral
Study Type: Interventional
Study Phase: Not Applicable
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.

Eligibility
Participation Requirements
Sex: All
Minimum Age: 6
Maximum Age: 7
Healthy Volunteers: t
View:

• current first grader (6;0 - 7;6)

• Geographically located within the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area

• Native English speakers

• Normal hearing

• Normal or corrected vision

• Children with a professional diagnosis of autism according to expert clinical judgment

• Capable of speaking sentences with three or more words

• Social Communication Parent Questionnaire score \> 15

• Autism diagnosis confirmed by ADOS

• Neurotypical: with no known cognitive, neurological, or psychiatric disorders

• Social Communication Parent Questionnaire score \< 11

• Receive a score within 1 SD of the population mean for age on all assessments.

Locations
United States
Massachusetts
Boston University
ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION
Boston
Northeastern University
RECRUITING
Boston
Contact Information
Primary
Brynn Siles, BS
plausl.project@gmail.com
617-830-1530
Time Frame
Start Date: 2024-01-13
Estimated Completion Date: 2025-08-31
Participants
Target number of participants: 50
Treatments
Experimental: Enrolled participants
Structural vs. Random sequences of stimuli; Intact vs. Degraded speech; Repeating 5-syllable nonwords or 2-syllable nonwords; Recall letter or syllable strings that either contain highly frequent bigram/trigram items or infrequent items according to English Corpus data
Related Therapeutic Areas
Sponsors
Collaborators: University of Delaware, Boston University, Cornell University
Leads: Northeastern University

This content was sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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