Mechanisms underlying word learning in children with ASD: Non-social learning and

自闭症儿童词汇学习的机制：非社交学习和

• 批准号: 8699984
• 负责人: Sudha Arunachalam
• 金额: $ 17.14万
• 依托单位: BOSTON UNIVERSITY (CHARLES RIVER CAMPUS)
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-06-01 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8699984
• 关键词: Age; Area; Attention; Award; Basic Science; Behavior; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.); Characteristics; Child; Cognitive; Communication; Communication impairment; Cues; Data; Development; Development Plans; Disabled Children; Disease; Educational process of instructing; Eye; Family; Future; Goals; Impairment; Incidence; Infant; Intervention; Knowledge; Language; Language Development; Language Disorders; Lead; Learning; Linguistics; Measures; Medical; Memory; Modeling; Napping; Nursery Schools; Outcome; Outcomes Research; Performance; Population; Preparation; Procedures; Process; Psycholinguistics; Quality of life; Relative (related person); Research; Sleep; Social Conditions; Social Environment; Social Interaction; Speech; Stimulus; Stress; Structure; Tars; Teaching Method; Testing; Text; Time; Toddler; Training; Translational Research; Vocabulary; Work; autism spectrum disorder; awake; base; career; career development; computerized; cost; early childhood; gaze; improved; insight; novel; public health relevance; research study; skills; social; standard measure; success; syntax; theories

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Considering the high incidence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (latest CDC estimate: 1 in 50), its impact on family stress and medical costs, and the devastating effects of its associated communication deficits on long-term outcomes, research aimed at improving language and cognitive skills in this population in early childhood is critical. We seek to understand conditions underlying successful language development in young children with ASD in order to develop interventions that are most likely to promote their language and cognitive skills, and to improve their educational, vocational, and personal outcomes. Specifically, we focus on improving receptive vocabulary, or understanding of word meanings, in children with ASD. Receptive vocabulary knowledge is a prerequisite to further language development. It is therefore critical for interventions in the infant, toddler, and preschool years to increase receptive vocabulary in children with disabilities. The goal of this proposal is to discover conditions under which children with ASD acquire receptive vocabulary meanings, retain them over time, and generalize them to new exemplars differing slightly from those with which the word was initially presented. As yet little is known about the cognitive processes underlying word learning in ASD. It is therefore likely that we have not discovered the optimal conditions for promoting learning in interventions. We concentrate on two processes that impact learning in typical development, but have not been well studied in ASD: 1) use of linguistic context to acquire word meanings, and 2) consolidation of memories during sleep. First, we ask if-given the social impairments associated with ASD-children with ASD acquire word meanings more successfully in non-social and non-interactive contexts, but rich linguistic contexts. We compare performance in a non-social context to a social context modeled on standard therapies. Second, we ask if understanding memory consolidation in ASD can improve our ability to promote retention and generalization of word meanings. This work will provide a basis for new interventions to increase receptive vocabulary. In future work, we will use the findings to develop and test such an intervention. This proposal is intended to provide the PI with a structured career development plan that will allow her to carry out this research, building on her extensive background in language development in typically developing populations, and adding expertise in two new areas: 1) language development in young children with ASD, and 2) sleep-dependent memory consolidation as it relates to language learning. The training provided by this award will transition the PI from basic research in language development to an independent career in translational research, studying language learning in populations with communication disorders.

描述（由申请人提供）：考虑自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的高发病率（最新的CDC估计值：50分之一），其对家庭压力和医疗费用的影响以及其相关沟通缺陷对长期结果的毁灭性影响，旨在提高儿童早期人群中语言和认知能力的研究至关重要。我们试图了解ASD年幼儿童成功发展语言发展的条件，以制定最有可能促进其语言和认知能力的干预措施，并提高其教育，职业和个人成果。具体而言，我们专注于改善ASD儿童的接受性词汇或对单词含义的理解。接受词汇知识是进一步发展语言发展的先决条件。因此，对于增加残疾儿童接受词汇的婴儿，幼儿和学龄前年的干预措施至关重要。该提案的目的是发现ASD儿童获得接受词汇含义的情况，随着时间的推移将其保留，并将其概括为与最初呈现单词的新典范相差略有不同。关于ASD中单词学习的认知过程，尚未了解。因此，我们很可能没有发现促进干预中学习的最佳条件。我们专注于两种影响典型发展中学习的过程，但在ASD中尚未对学习进行很好的研究：1）使用语言环境来获取单词含义，以及2）在睡眠期间巩固记忆。首先，我们询问与ASD与ASD相关的社会障碍是否在非社会和非交互式环境中更成功地获取单词含义，但具有丰富的语言背景。我们将非社会环境中的表现与标准疗法建立的社会环境进行比较。其次，我们询问了解ASD中的记忆合并是否可以提高我们促进单词含义的保留和概括的能力。这项工作将为新的干预措施增加接受词汇提供基础。在将来的工作中，我们将使用这些发现来开发和测试这种干预措施。该提案旨在为PI提供一项结构化的职业发展计划，该计划将使她能够进行这项研究，以她在典型发展人群中的语言发展方面进行广泛的背景，并在两个新领域中增加专业知识：1）ASD患有ASD的幼儿和2）与语言学习有关的幼儿的语言发展。该奖项提供的培训将使PI从语言发展的基础研究转变为转化研究的独立职业，研究沟通障碍人群中的语言学习。