Understanding autism from the minute to the masses: Autism research at the Waisman Center

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an intricate and complicated diagnosis. The spectrum of presentations and severity is as expansive as the theorized causes. Autism’s complexity and breadth of impacts on a person’s life means that it has a multitude of facets to investigate.

Little Listeners Project (Ellis Weismer & Saffran)

We are looking for children to participate in research on the UW-Madison campus about how toddlers learn language. We are looking for typically developing children 18-24 months old and children with diagnosed or suspected ASD …

Susan Ellis Weismer, PhD – Slide of the Week

In typical development, listeners can use semantic content of verbs to facilitate incremental language processing-a skill that is associated with existing language skills. Studies of children with ASD have not identified an association between incremental language processing in semantically-constraining contexts and language skills, perhaps because participants were adolescents and/or children with strong language skills.