We are very happy to announce that Dr. Qi’s proposal titled “Investigating statistical learning in children with ASD across linguistic and non-linguistic domains” was selected for funding under the 2017 University of Delaware Research Foundation (UDRF) Strategic Initiative Program. Our research aims to understand the role of statistical learning in language impairment in ASD combining genetic and fMRI data. Dr. Diane Chugani from Communication Sciences and Disorders will serve as the Co-PI of this project.

More than half of the individuals with ASD display moderate to severe language impairment. The failure to master one’s native language in turn exacerbates children’s difficulties in social communication. Statistical learning, an ability that allows typically developing children to extract sound and grammatical patterns from speech input, is proposed to be critical for first language impairment. Our study aims to determine whether and how children with ASD are impaired in statistical learning. We propose a highly innovative internet-based approach to link statistical learning behavior with large-scale genetic data available through SPARK (Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge) database. We also probe the neural substrates of impaired statistical learning in ASD with cutting-edge neuroimaging technology. We aim to delineate the links between genetic, neural, and cognitive mechanisms of language impairment in children with ASD and ultimately pave the way for novel neural-modulation solutions to facilitate language learning during critical periods of development in children with ASD.

Please keep tuned and we will report back what we find from our work!