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

描述（由申请人提供）：考虑到自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的高发病率（最新CDC估计：50分之1），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破坏性影响，旨在改善儿童早期语言和认知技能的研究至关重要。我们寻求了解自闭症谱系障碍幼儿成功语言发展的条件，以便制定最有可能促进他们的语言和认知技能并改善他们的教育、职业和个人成果的干预措施。具体来说，我们专注于提高自闭症谱系障碍儿童的接受性词汇或对单词含义的理解。接受性词汇知识是语言进一步发展的先决条件。因此，在婴儿，幼儿和学龄前的干预措施，以增加残疾儿童的接受词汇是至关重要的。这项研究的目的是发现自闭症儿童获得接受性词汇意义的条件，随着时间的推移保留它们，并将它们概括为与最初呈现的单词略有不同的新范例。然而，对ASD患者词汇学习的认知过程知之甚少。因此，我们可能还没有发现在干预措施中促进学习的最佳条件。我们集中在两个过程中，影响学习的典型发展，但尚未得到很好的研究，在ASD：1）使用语言背景，以获得单词的含义，2）巩固记忆在睡眠中。首先，我们问，如果考虑到与ASD相关的社会障碍，ASD儿童在非社会和非互动的背景下，但丰富的语言背景下更成功地获得词义。我们将非社会背景下的表现与以标准疗法为模型的社会背景下的表现进行比较。其次，我们询问理解自闭症谱系障碍的记忆巩固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提供基础，以增加接受性词汇。在未来的工作中，我们将利用这些发现来开发和测试这种干预措施。该提案旨在为PI提供一个结构化的职业发展计划，使其能够开展这项研究，建立在她在典型发展中人群语言发展方面的广泛背景之上，并增加两个新领域的专业知识：1）ASD幼儿的语言发展，2）与语言学习相关的睡眠依赖性记忆巩固。该奖项提供的培训将使PI从语言发展的基础研究过渡到翻译研究的独立职业，研究沟通障碍人群的语言学习。

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.