Predicting Language and Literacy Growth in Children With ASD Using Statistical Learning
NCT ID: NCT06332144
Last Updated: 2025-12-22
Study Results
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Basic Information
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COMPLETED
NA
41 participants
INTERVENTIONAL
2024-01-13
2025-08-31
Brief Summary
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1. whether children's statistical learning abilities can predict their long-term improvement of language and literacy skills in school;
2. how children's brains automatically learn patterns from speech and prints;
3. whether children's learning in the lab reflects the language patterns they have learned over the years from their native language.
First-grade students will participate in the study twice across three months.
During Time 1, children will complete
* a battery of language, reading, and cognitive assessments
* a series of computer-based statistical learning games both inside and outside of functional MRI scanner.
During Time 2, children will complete a battery of language and reading assessments to detect the growth in three months.
Researchers will compare the autistic and the non-autistic groups to see if statistical learning plays a similar or different role in predicting children's language and literacy growth.
Detailed Description
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Aim 1: Establish the longitudinal relationships between SL and language/literacy development in both TD and ASD. In this aim, the investigators will evaluate the role of SL in both concurrent and the growth of language/literacy skills assessed in three months during the school year. The investigators expect that linguistic SL (embedded pattern learning of syllables and letters) is associated with concurrent language and literacy skills and will prove to be crucial predictors of growth in language and literacy skills in both groups. Given the small sample size in this one-year project, the investigators will build prediction models both across the two groups and within each group. Sex, concurrent language and reading skills, and nonverbal IQ will be included as key covariables.
Aim 2: Determine the longitudinal relationships between neural bases of SL and developing language networks in the brains of children with ASD. In this aim, the investigators will test whether altered brain functions during linguistic SL are related to poorly functioning language networks (language comprehension and phonological working memory), defined within each individual child. The investigators will also examine whether neural bases of linguistic SL predict future language and literacy development in children with ASD. Participants from Aim 1 will complete linguistic SL tasks and two well-validated language tasks in the fMRI scanner at Time 1. The investigators expect to find reduced engagement of language networks during SL in children with ASD and to provide a neurobiological explanation for the cascading effect impaired linguistic SL casts on future language development.
Aim 3: Test whether linguistic SL is a proxy for children's sensitivity to real-world language statistics. The investigators ask whether the specific weakness in linguistic SL in ASD generalizes to real-world language statistics using serial recall tasks, a well-validated instrument for individuals' sensitivity to native-language statistical patterns. The same participants in the previous aims will complete a phonological and an orthographic serial recall task containing both high- and low-frequency English bigrams/trigrams at Time 1 and Time 2. The investigators predict that these tasks will be associated with children's linguistic SL performance in Aim 1 and children's linguistic SL at earlier times will predict the future growth of sensitivity to natural language statistics. These findings will establish the critical link between linguistic SL and children's natural language skills.
Conditions
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Keywords
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Study Design
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NA
SINGLE_GROUP
DIAGNOSTIC
NONE
Study Groups
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Enrolled participants
Structural vs. Random sequences of stimuli; Intact vs. Degraded speech; Repeating 5-syllable nonwords or 2-syllable nonwords; Recall letter or syllable strings that either contain highly frequent bigram/trigram items or infrequent items according to English Corpus data
Structural vs. Random sequences of stimuli
Participants will see or listen to sequences of sounds and images either in a structured condition or a random condition.
Intact vs. Degraded speech
Participants will listen to an audiobook "Alice in Wonderland" in the MRI scanner. The speech is either intact or degraded.
Repeating 5-syllable nonwords or 2-syllable nonwords
Participants will listen to nonwords (either 5-syllable or 2-syllable) and then repeat them as accurately as possible in the MRI scanner.
Recall letter or syllable strings that either contain highly frequent bigram/trigram items or infrequent items according to English Corpus data.
Participants will read (orthographic serial recall) or listen to (phonological serial recall) strings.
Interventions
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Structural vs. Random sequences of stimuli
Participants will see or listen to sequences of sounds and images either in a structured condition or a random condition.
Intact vs. Degraded speech
Participants will listen to an audiobook "Alice in Wonderland" in the MRI scanner. The speech is either intact or degraded.
Repeating 5-syllable nonwords or 2-syllable nonwords
Participants will listen to nonwords (either 5-syllable or 2-syllable) and then repeat them as accurately as possible in the MRI scanner.
Recall letter or syllable strings that either contain highly frequent bigram/trigram items or infrequent items according to English Corpus data.
Participants will read (orthographic serial recall) or listen to (phonological serial recall) strings.
Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria
* Geographically located within the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area
* Native English speakers
* Normal hearing
* Normal or corrected vision
* Children with a professional diagnosis of autism according to expert clinical judgment
* Capable of speaking sentences with three or more words
* Social Communication Parent Questionnaire score \> 15
* Autism diagnosis confirmed by ADOS
* Neurotypical: with no known cognitive, neurological, or psychiatric disorders
* Social Communication Parent Questionnaire score \< 11
* Receive a score within 1 SD of the population mean for age on all assessments.
Exclusion Criteria
* More than 30 hours of exposure to a language other than English per week
* history of brain injuries and head injuries
* intellectual disability, mutism, motor delay, or developmental coordination disorder
* metal in body
* claustrophobic
* history of prior neurosurgical procedure
* substance abuse
* signs of increased intracranial pressure
72 Months
90 Months
ALL
Yes
Sponsors
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University of Delaware
OTHER
Boston University
OTHER
Cornell University
OTHER
Northeastern University
OTHER
Responsible Party
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Principal Investigators
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Zhenghan Qi, MD/PhD
Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
Northeastern University
Locations
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Northeastern University
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Countries
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References
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Ozernov-Palchik O, Qi Z, Beach SD, Gabrieli JDE. Intact procedural memory and impaired auditory statistical learning in adults with dyslexia. Neuropsychologia. 2023 Sep 9;188:108638. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108638. Epub 2023 Jul 28.
Hu A, Kozloff V, Owen Van Horne A, Chugani D, Qi Z. Dissociation Between Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Statistical Learning in Children with Autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 2024 May;54(5):1912-1927. doi: 10.1007/s10803-023-05902-1. Epub 2023 Feb 7.
O'Brien AM, Perrachione TK, Wisman Weil L, Sanchez Araujo Y, Halverson K, Harris A, Ostrovskaya I, Kjelgaard M, Kenneth Wexler, Tager-Flusberg H, Gabrieli JDE, Qi Z. Altered engagement of the speech motor network is associated with reduced phonological working memory in autism. Neuroimage Clin. 2023;37:103299. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2022.103299. Epub 2022 Dec 23.
Schneider JM, Hu A, Legault J, Qi Z. Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques. J Vis Exp. 2020 Jun 30;(160):10.3791/61474. doi: 10.3791/61474.
Related Links
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PLAUSL Project Website
Other Identifiers
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