An interventional study of Structural vs. Random sequences of stimuli and Intact vs. Degraded speech in Autism Spectrum Disorder, Language Development and Literacy, sponsored by Northeastern University. Completed at 2 sites in United States. Open to participants aged 72 Months to 90 Months, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2025-12-22.
Sponsored by Northeastern University · Not applicable, Interventional, and Diagnostic
The goal of this observational study is to test a reciprocal relationship between statistical learning and the development of language and literacy in first-graders with autism and their non-autistic peers. The main questions it aims to answer are:
First-grade students will participate in the study twice across three months.
During Time 1, children will complete
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.
In this one-year R56 project, the investigators will design a mini-longitudinal project to test how children's linguistic statistical learning predicts their growth in spoken and written language in three months. The investigators predict that weaker linguistic statistical learning underlies the exacerbation of language and literacy delay in children with ASD. In this project, the investigators will gamify an existing study protocol, which has led to promising discoveries motivating the original R01 proposal. With an enriched platform, the investigators expect a low attrition rate (\<10%) and few missing data (>90% task completion rate) in this longitudinal sample of six-year-olds both with and without ASD, matched on age and sex ratio. This project will lead to critical feasibility and preliminary data to support the key hypotheses of all three aims. Due to a shortened timeline, the investigators plan to recruit 25 children per group, sampled from a diverse population, to ensure the team's capacity for a three-month follow-up session before the end of a school year.
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.
1,724 studies on the registry are indexed under Autism Spectrum Disorder; 500 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 41 is below the median of 52 across 1,368 interventional studies indexed under Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Browse Autism Spectrum Disorder studies →Northeastern University is the lead sponsor of 55 studies on the registry; 19 are open to participants now.
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Inclusion Criteria:
Inclusion criteria for children with ASD (N = 25):
Inclusion criteria for typically developing controls (N = 25):
Exclusion Criteria:
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
Behavioral: Structural vs. Random sequences of stimuli · Behavioral: Intact vs. Degraded speech · Behavioral: Repeating 5-syllable nonwords or 2-syllable nonwords · Behavioral: Recall letter or syllable strings that either contain highly frequent bigram/trigram items or infrequent items according to English Corpus data.
Participants will see or listen to sequences of sounds and images either in a structured condition or a random condition.
Participants will listen to an audiobook "Alice in Wonderland" in the MRI scanner. The speech is either intact or degraded.
Participants will listen to nonwords (either 5-syllable or 2-syllable) and then repeat them as accurately as possible in the MRI scanner.
Participants will read (orthographic serial recall) or listen to (phonological serial recall) strings.
Language Composite Score
The concurrent language skills will be computed by averaging each child's standardized scores across the TILLS language subsets and NIH Toolbox Picture Vocab. The composite score will range between 50 and 150. The higher score, the better language skills.
Time frame: At each of the two measuring time points during the school year of the first grade with three months apart over a 40-minute teleassessment session
Reading Composite Score
The concurrent reading skills will be computed by averaging across WRMT-III subtests, NIH Toolbox oral reading recognition. The composite score will range between 50 and 150. The higher score, the better reading skills.
Time frame: At each of the two measuring time points during the school year of the first grade with three months apart over a 40-minute teleassessment session
Language/Literacy Disorder Status
The binary status is determined by children's TILLS Identification core scores
Time frame: At the first visit during the school year of the first grade over a 40-minute teleassessment session
Neural similarity between language and statistical learning tasks
The multivoxel similarity between language processing (or phonological working memory) tasks and the statistical learning task in subject-specific language (or phonological working memory) brain regions.
Time frame: At the first visit during the school year of the first grade over a two-hour MRI session
Orthographic statistical sensitivity
The difference in recall accuracy of bigrams/trigrams between the high- vs. low-frequency items in the orthographic serial recall task.
Time frame: At each of the two measuring time points during the school year of the first grade with three months apart
Phonological statistical sensitivity
The difference in recall accuracy of bigrams/trigrams between the high- vs. low-frequency items in the phonological serial recall task.
Time frame: At each of the two measuring time points during the school year of the first grade with three months apart
Linguistic SL composite scores
The linguistic SL score will be the average of the letter and the syllable composite scores after averaging across the normalized scores of RT slope, accuracy, and serial recall.
Time frame: At each of the two measuring time points during the school year of the first grade with three months apart
Neural sensitivity to statistical regularities during the statistical learning tasks
The magnitude of BOLD responses to structured vs. random conditions in the syllable and the letter statistical learning tasks.
Time frame: At the first visit during the school year of the first grade over a two-hour MRI session
Neural activation to statistical regularities during the language tasks
The magnitude of BOLD responses to intact vs. degraded speech and 5-vs-2 syllable in the language and phonological working memory tasks
Time frame: At the first visit during the school year of the first grade over a two-hour MRI session
Plan to share: Yes — The demographic and behavioral information will be made available in the form of a comma delimited text file and a code book. We will disguise individuals' identities by redacting birthdates and date of examination from the available records and by replacing names with coded alphanumeric values. When permission is granted, we will deposit all raw, de-identified behavioral and neuroimaging data into the National Institute of Mental Health Data Archive (NDA). The fMRI data will be uploaded to a public repository to improve meta-analyses and data-sharing (NeuroVault, OpenNeuro). To protect the privacy and confidentiality of the participants, raw video or audio files will not be shared outside of the research team. We do not commit to processing additional data beyond our own needs for the purpose of sharing. Any data we have processed we are willing to share. We will submit electronic versions of all accepted manuscripts to the NIH National Library of Medicine PubMed database.
Supporting information: Study protocol, Statistical analysis plan, Analytic code
Time frame: The data will be made available to other users within 12 months of the final data point being collected or at the time of an associated publication, whichever comes first.
Access criteria: All research participants will be consented for broad data sharing. To protect the privacy and confidentiality of the participants, raw video or audio files will not be shared outside of the research team. We do not commit to processing additional data beyond our own needs for the purpose of sharing. Any data we have processed we are willing to share. To request access of the data, researchers will use the standard processes at NDA, and the NDA Data Access Committee will decide which requests to grant. The standard NDA data access process allows access for one year and is renewable. The NDA GUID tool allows researchers to aggregate data from the same research participant without different laboratories having to share personally identifiable information about that research participant. The NDA data dictionaries do not permit personally identifiable information to be shared. NDA maintains a Certificate of Confidentiality.
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