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(CDC最新估计：50人中有1人)，其对家庭压力和医疗费用的影响，以及与其相关的沟通缺陷对长期结果的破坏性影响，旨在改善这一人群在幼儿时期的语言和认知技能的研究至关重要。我们试图了解自闭症儿童成功语言发展的条件，以便开发最有可能促进他们的语言和认知技能的干预措施，并改善他们的教育、职业和个人成果。具体地说，我们专注于提高ASD儿童的接受性词汇，或对词义的理解。接受性词汇知识是语言进一步发展的前提。因此，对于婴幼儿、幼儿和学龄前儿童的干预来说，增加残疾儿童的接受性词汇是至关重要的。这项建议的目标是发现自闭症儿童获得接受性词汇含义的条件，并随着时间的推移保持它们，并将它们推广到与最初呈现该单词的那些略有不同的新样本中。到目前为止，人们对自闭症患者词汇学习的认知过程知之甚少。因此，我们很可能没有发现在干预中促进学习的最佳条件。我们专注于两个影响典型发展中学习的过程，但在ASD中尚未得到很好的研究：1)使用语言语境获得词义，2)在睡眠中巩固记忆。首先，我们问--考虑到与自闭症相关的社会障碍--自闭症儿童是否在非社交和非互动的语境中更成功地获得了词义，但在丰富的语言语境中。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，我们询问了解ASD中的记忆巩固是否可以提高我们促进词义保持和概括的能力。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。这项提议旨在为PI提供一个系统的职业发展计划，使她能够开展这项研究，以她在典型发展中人群的语言发展方面的广泛背景为基础，并增加两个新领域的专业知识：1)患有自闭症儿童的语言发展，以及2)与语言学习有关的睡眠依赖记忆巩固。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.