Predicting language and literacy growth in children with ASD using statistical learning

摘要 患有自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)的儿童在核心语言能力上表现出巨大的异质性，如 如音韵学和语法。超过50%的患有自闭症的言语儿童表现出显著的迟缓和功能障碍 语言和阅读。自闭症儿童语言障碍的存在加剧了社交 损害和扩大了学校的成绩差距。尽管识别和处理语言的紧迫性 自闭症儿童的损害，是我们对语言变异的起源理解上的关键差距 ASD仍然是主要的挑战。统计学习(SL)，人类强大的内隐学习能力和 从输入中适应规律性，在非典型语言发展领域得到了越来越多的关注。 鉴于自闭症患者在社会交往方面的缺陷，人们假设这一人群中的语言习得 利用内隐学习，如二语，而不是外显学习。然而，由于大量的 在SL测量和异质人群研究中的方法论挑战，都是缺乏的 以确定二语在语言中的机械作用和临床价值 ASD的发展。我们的中心假设是二语与语言之间的双向关系 经历了一个相互引导的过程，实际上是一个良性循环。在这个框架下，我们预测， 第二语言的薄弱是学龄儿童语言和识字延迟加剧的主要原因 患有自闭症的儿童。目标1建议明确二语和语言/识字之间的纵向关系 自闭症儿童从一年级(6岁)到三年级(8岁)的发育。《目标2》将专注于 二语神经基础与发展中语言网络之间的纵向关系 自闭症儿童的大脑。目标3将测试使用人工语言测量的语言习得是否可以作为替代 关于儿童对使用语料库数据的真实世界统计数据的敏感性。拟议的研究将产生批判性知识 用于开发诊断工具来表征患有自闭症儿童的内隐学习能力。多式联运 纵向调查，纳入新的和理论上激励的二语和语言测量方法 功能，将说明异常学习对语言和识字发展的连锁效应。这个 这些发现将为未来测试内隐学习范式的治疗潜力的研究铺平道路 在自然主义的背景下进行语言干预。

Abstract Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show enormous heterogeneity in core language abilities, such as phonology and grammar. Over 50% of verbal children with ASD exhibit significant delay and impairment in language and reading. The presence of language impairment in children with ASD exacerbates social impairment and widens the achievement gaps in school. Despite the urgency of identifying and treating language impairment in children with ASD, the critical gap in our understanding of the origin of the language variability in ASD remain as the major challenge. Statistical learning (SL), the robust human ability to implicitly learn and adapt to regularities from inputs, has gained increasing attention in the field of atypical language development. Given deficits in social interaction in ASD, it has been postulated that language acquisition in this population capitalizes on implicit learning, such as SL, rather than explicit learning. However, due to the substantial methodological challenges in both SL measures and research with a heterogeneous population, there is a dearth of longitudinal datasets in the field to determine the mechanistic role and clinical value of SL in language development in ASD. Our central hypothesis is that the bidirectional relationship between SL and language undergoes a mutual bootstrapping process, effectively a virtuous cycle. Under this framework, we predict that weakness in SL underlies the exacerbation of language and literacy delay in a major subgroup of school-aged children with ASD. Aim 1 proposes to specify the longitudinal relationship between SL and language/literacy development in children with ASD from first grade (6 years old) to third grade (8 years old). Aim 2 will focus on determining the longitudinal relationships between neural bases of SL and developing language networks in the brains of children with ASD. Aim 3 will test whether linguistic SL measured using artificial languages is a proxy for children’s sensitivity to real-world statistics using corpus data. The proposed study will yield critical knowledge for developing diagnostic tools to characterize implicit learning ability in young children with ASD. The multimodal longitudinal investigation, incorporating novel and theoretically motivated measures of SL and language functions, will illuminate the cascading effect of abnormal learning on language and literacy development. The findings will pave the way for future research that tests the therapeutic potential of implicit learning paradigms for language intervention in a naturalistic setting.