Volunteers for Study in CT

[Guest guest]

I have received the following email with attached information which I

believe many would be interested in. Please feel free to pass the

following information on to those who many also find this of interest:

Fw: Autism Study at Haskins Laboratories

We are currently helping to recruit families for a study on the

audiovisual perception of children with autism. This is a National

Institutes of Health-funded study at the Child Language Studies of

Haskins Laboratories, which is affiliated with both Yale University and

the University of Connecticut. We are working with Dr. Irwin, a

senior research scientist from Southern Connecticut State University. We

understand that you provide services for children with disabilities and

we were hoping you would help us contact families who may be eligible

for our study. Briefly, the goal of our study is to determine if

children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) process and perceive

audiovisual speech differently than their typical peers. We hope that by

understanding how children with ASD use a speaker's face to process

speech information, we can help in the development of appropriate

interventions for using and understanding speech as effectively as

possible. We are seeking 5- t hrough 10-year-olds who are willing to

visit our family-friendly facility in New Haven, CT. The child will be

compensated at $10 an hour for their participation. Parents will have

the opportunity to receive the test scores from language and cognitive

assessments, though these are strictly research-based and will not

reflect clinical diagnosis.

Below is a one-page study description, which explains the study in

detail. If you would consider placing the information in your office, or

handing it out to families who may be interested, we would greatly

appreciate it. Parents should contact the Child Language Studies lab at

, ext 337 or via email at

ListeningToFaces@...

<mailto:ListeningToFaces%40haskins.yale.edu> with any of their questions

or if they would like to participate.

Again, we appreciate your help in promoting our study. We are excited to

have this opportunity to learn more about autism, and we hope that you

can help us by supporting our research.

Grohman and Kennedy

R. Irwin, PhD

Haskins Laboratories

IRB# 26173, Yale School of Medicine

Audiovisual Speech Perception in 7-12 Year Old Children

Study Description

This study aims to determine whether children with autism spectrum

disorders (ASD)

perceive and process audiovisual speech differently from their typically

developing (TD)

peers. Videos of speaking human and computer animated faces paired with

a noninvasive

method to track eye movements will be used to determine how affected

children use a speaker's face as part of their perceptual processing of

speech. This study has important practical implications for the design

of targeted interventions for verbal and non-verbal children with ASD.

Participants will be asked to watch movies of speaking faces and to

complete standard cognitive, language and social tasks. In addition,

parents will be interviewed about their child's developmental history.

Participation can be completed in one 2- to 3-hour session at the

Haskins Child Language Studies laboratory at 300 Street, New

Haven, CT. Participants will receive $10.00 per hour for their

participation, travel and parking costs.

For further contact or study information, or to register for this

research study online, please visit our website at

http://www.haskins.yale.edu/cls.html or at

http://www.haskins.yale.edu/newsrelease/HNR_Irwin01.html. In addition,

we can be reached directly by phone at , x337 or x245.