Autistic

A poster on autistic children’s engagement of the language system during letter statistical learning.

A talk on the behavioral profiles of autistic children’s mapping and retention of novel words.

A technical session on autistic children’s encoding and retrieval of pragmatically inferred words.

A talk on autistic children’s encoding and retrieval of pragmatically inferred words.

A talk on autistic children’s encoding and retrieval of pragmatically inferred words.

A talk on autistic children’s neural plasticity during statistical learning.

A poster on autistic children’s encoding and retrieval of pragmatically inferred words.

How do different modalities and domains of statistical learning skills grow and change across development in different populations, and what brain systems and connectivities underpin this? In this collection of projects, we use online statistical learning in MRI amd EEG to tease apart the developmental time-course of statistical learning in neurotypical individuals and determine how it differs in autistic children. We critically examine hypotheses of invariance, change, and domain-general vs language-specific mechanisms in statistical learning, and chart out the neural underpinnings of behavioral differences and connections to language development across our groups. Major contributions: Empirically demonstrate lessened ingagemnt of the language system in autistic children when processing letters and letter sequences; explore the neural development of auditory linguistic statistical learning in neurotypical children and adults and its greater plasticity in the language network in childhood; capture both the neural stability and changes in distributional statistical learning and it’s connections to sequential statisticla learning across development; run and analyze neuroimaging data in neurotypical adults and children and autistic children using MRI (BOLD activation, MVPA, structural connectivity) and EEG (ERP, topography); analyze and publish results

How does the need to make pragmatic inferences to map words impact novel word meaning memory? In this collection of projects, we examine how the cognitive and neural basis of social cognition modulate word learning outcomes in neurotypical and autistic adults and children, how and why this may differ between individuals and groups, and the role that a learner’s perceptions may play. Major contributions: Empirically demonstrate stronger retention of pragmatically inferred over directly mapped words in neurotypical and autistic adults, older typically developing children, and a sub-group of autistic children, and a lack of it in younger typically developing children and a subgroup of autistic children; explore a significant modulating effect of social-cognitive ability, engagement, and neural connections to memory via behavioral correlations, priming, and neural activation; conceptualize, design, program, run, and analyze neuroimaging data in neurotypical and autistic adults using fMRI (BOLD activation, MVPA, and functional connectivity) and EEG (pseudo-hyperscanning) and eye-tracking in neurotypical and autistic children; analyze and publish results; write fellowship proposal and assist in drafting additional grants; lead commmunity advisory board panel

How do reading difficulties in autism compare to dyslexia on a behavioral and neural level and can reading interventions designed for disorders like dyslexia similarly support struggling autistic readers? In this project, we use characterizations of reading and potentially intertwined cognitive abilities and measures of reading decoding and comprehension in MRI to capture the profiles and underpinning of reading disorders in autism, compare this to dyslexia, and determine potential intervention success. Major (ongoing) contributions: conceptualize, design, program, run, and analyze behavioral and neuroimaging data in autistic, dyslexic, and neurotically children using MRI (BOLD activation, structural connectivity, functional connectivity); analyze and publish results; write fellowship proposal and assist in drafting additional grant proposals