the "cool project"

[mici]

hi everyone just wondering wether anyone out there knows what the cool project is about, as the ed pys has mentioned in her report that this would be very helpful both in terms of assesment and intervention.

any ideas anyone, would appreciate any views please

 

 

many thanxs

mici

Edited October 25, 2005 by mici

[Zemanski]

sorry - tried to look it up but all I got on google was hip hop for disaffected street kids!

 

Zemanski

[puffin]

Are you sure of the spelling? Could she be referring to the Kuhl Project? This is a research project into Language defecit and autism being carried out by the National Institute of Child Health & Human development

 

http://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/cdbpm/mrdd/...ct=summary1.htm

 

The following is a summary of the research project from the Institute's website:

 

 

Project II: Language deficits in Autism

Principal Investigator: Patricia Kuhl, Ph.D

 

Language and communication impairments are key components of autism. We previously examined early measures of language in 3-4 year old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and children with developmental delay (DD) and typical development (TD). We examined specific speech processing abilities, aspects of social communication, and cross-modal measures (auditory-visual and imitation) of speech processing. Results revealed critical differences on several measures between preschool age children with ASD and those with DD and TD. We now propose to evaluate the same children with ASD and DD at age 9, examining the stability and predictive utility of our early language measures, and assessing other aspects of language function relevant to older children. We will focus on: (1) Language processing -- Event-related brain potential measures of phonetic perception revealed that 3-4 year old children with ASD exhibit deficits in the capacity to differentiate phonetic units of speech. We will assess the longitudinal stability of this basic capacity and the predictive relation between early deficits and later language ability at age 9. In those ASD children who have spoken language, we will conduct ERP studies of word and sentence processing to assess impairment. (2) Social communication - Our work showed that listening preferences in children with ASD differ from those with DD and TD. Children with ASD preferred listening to mechanical-sounding auditory signals rather than speech. We will further examine this preference, varying the voice from human to nonhuman, and from highly inflected to monotone. New research suggests that adults with autism focus their visual attention on the mouth of the speaker, not the eyes, and our cross-modal and imitation studies show that children with ASD often cover their eyes when confronted with a talking face. We will examine how visual fixation patterns differ between children with ASD, and those with DD and TD when viewing a speaker. (3) Speech imitation and cross-modal speech perception - We found that children with ASD were more likely to vocally imitate than children with TD, and vocal imitation was correlated with higher language scores. We will further examine vocal imitation and cross-modal speech perception in auditory-only versus auditory-visual situations, varying complexity and prosody. This work will shed light on the nature of language impairment in autism.

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know if this is what the ed psych means but hope it helps