Mark Strauss - US grants

The purpose of this program is to: 1) provide disabled children and adults with an improved educational experience and a more self-sufficient capability, 2) provide superlative training for the engineering student who designs, builds and implements a device to help a person in need; this "real world" experience will certainly generate great motivation and foster an engineering education with a unique sense of purpose and pride, 3) provide the engineering school with an opportunity to perform a unique service to the community, 4) provide the bioengineering academic community an opportunity to build infrastructure with the university.

HRD-9450020 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Mark G. Strauss, Ph.D., Principal Investigator "Project PRIMES: Promoting & Retaining In Math, Engineering & Science" ABSTRACT This Experimental Project is designed to address the underrepresentation of persons with disabilities in science, engineering and mathematics (SEM) careers and those actively pursuing degrees in these fields. Project PRIMES has two main goals: (1) increasing the enrollment and retention of students with disabilities in SEM at the high school and college levels, and 2) increasing the understanding of the factors which contribute to this inequity. The goal of increasing the enrollment and retention of students with disabilities in SEM in high school and college levels are to be addressed through three tasks. (a) Workshops will be conducted for high school math and science teachers and guidance counselors, high school students with disabilities and their families, and state vocational rehabilitation counselors. The workshops will discuss methods to overcome handicapping conditions in an academic pursuit of SEM. Topics covered include: state and federal regulations governing educational access; funding availability at the local, state and federal levels; availability of technology to increase access to laboratories and computers; availability of referral and human resources to identify and assist in reducing or eliminating handicapping situations; teaching the necessary preparation for successful transition from high school to college. The high school students with disabilities participating in these workshops will be targeted for direct recruitment by SEM college departments. Internet and e-mail access will be provided for the high school via the University of Illinois Computer Service in order to facilitate peer-to-peer support between students in different high schools and mentoring support provided by college students with disabilities w ho are enrolled in SEM. Mini-grants will be awarded to math and science teachers to provide necessary access technology and to develop either new teaching/laboratory modules or to modify existing ones to increase the integration of students with disabilities. (b) The SEM department faculty at the University of Illinois will be provided educational workshops on how to teach for students with disabilities. Many of the issues addressed in the workshops will be discussed. Similar mini-grants to college professors will be offered to improve the quality of the educational experience for students with disabilities enrolled in SEM. One professor in each SEM department will function as a mentor and advocate for the students with disabilities in the department. (c) A region-wide awareness program is planned. A professionally developed poster illustrating persons with disabilities successfully engaging in SEM fields at the high school, college and post-graduation levels will be sent to high school math and science departments and guidance counselor offices in Illinois and to children's and science museums in a five state region. The second goal related to increasing understanding of the factors that contribute to the underrepresentation of people with disabilities in SEM will be addressed by collecting and analyzing data from anonymous pre- and post- surveys completed by workshop participants. The surveys will ask participants to express their experiences, views and attitudes about people with disabilities in SEM careers. The most important and impeding issues will be integrated into future workshops and disseminated through national publications and presentations. The knowledge gained in this project should act as a model for other high schools and colleges to follow to increase the enrollment and retention of students with disabilities in SEM.

This proposal focuses on one of the most basic and critical aspects of information processing- categorization. The term categorization is used in a broad sense to mean not only the grouping of similar objects, but also a process basic to our core perceptual recognition abilities. Categorization is a process that begins within the first few months of life. Infants quickly begin to categorize their world, significantly reducing demands on memory. Once the infant can categorize and have a central representation of similar objects such as dogs, it is not necessary to remember every encountered instance unless the instance is unusual. The ability to categorize is also critical to language development, and most theories assume it is a pre- requisite for learning words. Categorizing or prototyping is also central to face recognition abilities and problem solving. This project will extend our current research on high functioning children and adults with autism (HFA) on processing categorical information about objects and facial information including gender, emotional expression, recognition and attractiveness. Studies will take a more in depth look at the mechanisms that underlie development of categorical expertise. Extensions of this research will look into understanding individual differences in performance of HFA participants, and will provide important behavioral indices of autism that will be used by Projects II, III and IV as they attempt to characterizethe neuroanatomy of autism as reflected in brain structure and connectivity. Importantly, this research will be extended to two populations critical to our understanding of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) including its origin, early diagnosis, and the development of early intervention strategies. First, this project will longitudinally study a group of 6- to 16- month old infant siblings of older children diagnosed with autism. Second, the project will study a group of newly diagnosed ASD toddlers that are low functioning. Both of these populations will be tested with nonverbal methodologies originally designed for studying typically developing infants and toddlers. These methods will allow us to look at critical early information processing abilities such as attention, memory, and categorization. These methods represent well-designed experimental procedures that could easily be translated to clinical practice for early diagnosis if results support their use. These methods allow us to study underlying information processes currently not addressed by more standard observation studies of at risk infants. These basic information processing mechanisms are more effectivetargets for changing outcome than behavior. This project will directly address the Autism Research Matrix goal #19 of developing "indices of risk for the development of autism" and #4 characterizing the autism phenome.

This proposal focuses on one of the most basic and critical aspects of information processing- categorization. The term categorization is used in a broad sense to mean not only the grouping of similar objects, but also a process basic to our core perceptual recognition abilities. Categorization is a process that begins within the first few months of life. Infants quickly begin to categorize their world, significantly reducing demands on memory. Once the infant can categorize and have a central representation of similar objects such as dogs, it is not necessary to remember every encountered instance unless the instance is unusual. The ability to categorize is also critical to language development, and most theories assume it is a pre- requisite for learning words. Categorizing or prototyping is also central to face recognition abilities and problem solving. This project will extend our current research on high functioning children and adults with autism (HFA) on processing categorical information about objects and facial information including gender, emotional expression, recognition and attractiveness. Studies will take a more in depth look at the mechanisms that underlie development of categorical expertise. Extensions of this research will look into understanding individual differences in performance of HFA participants, and will provide important behavioral indices of autism that will be used by Projects II, III and IV as they attempt to characterizethe neuroanatomy of autism as reflected in brain structure and connectivity. Importantly, this research will be extended to two populations critical to our understanding of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) including its origin, early diagnosis, and the development of early intervention strategies. First, this project will longitudinally study a group of 6- to 16- month old infant siblings of older children diagnosed with autism. Second, the project will study a group of newly diagnosed ASD toddlers that are low functioning. Both of these populations will be tested with nonverbal methodologies originally designed for studying typically developing infants and toddlers. These methods will allow us to look at critical early information processing abilities such as attention, memory, and categorization. These methods represent well-designed experimental procedures that could easily be translated to clinical practice for early diagnosis if results support their use. These methods allow us to study underlying information processes currently not addressed by more standard observation studies of at risk infants. These basic information processing mechanisms are more effectivetargets for changing outcome than behavior. This project will directly address the Autism Research Matrix goal #19 of developing "indices of risk for the development of autism" and #4 characterizing the autism phenome.

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Autism spectrum disorder is a major worldwide public health problem affecting 1 in 88 children and adults in the U.S. Autism is a lifelong debilitating developmental brain disorder characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication. We previously studied adults with autism using MRI diffusion tensor tracking (DTT), and found unique changes in white matter pathways used for recognizing faces and face emotions (critical aspects of social interaction and non-verbal communication). There was a relationship between these brain changes and early-childhood behaviors, suggesting that these brain changes may occur early in childhood, and may represent a lack of hemispheric specialization of face-processing pathways. In the same adults, we also found brain changes in the corpus callosum, a brain structure that allows information to flow between the brain's right and left hemisphere. Some characteristics of face processing and language function may be caused by such changes in the corpus callosum. However, to better understand the neurobiology of autism, it is necessary to test for these brain changes in very young children diagnosed with autism, because the changes in the adult brain could be due to many other factors that accumulate over decades. To determine whether such changes are a fundamental, primary abnormalities in autism that occur early in development, and that are present at the time of diagnosis, we will use DTT to: 1) test for water diffusion changes in the same face processing pathways in toddlers and preschoolers recently diagnosed with autism, 2) test for changes in language pathways, and 3) test for changes in the corpus callosum. The results will be compared to measures of face perception and language processing to determine the functional significance of the brain changes. We plan to study 20 toddlers/preschoolers with autism (2-5 years of age) and 20 individually-matched comparison children, where both groups have been clearly diagnosed and tested as either having autism or having normal development. The results will determine if the brain changes seen in adults with autism are more severe, similar, or less severe in early childhood soon after diagnosis. Our long- term goals are to: 1) provide a better understanding of the underlying biological mechanisms and causes of autism; 2) improve the early diagnosis, screening, risk assessment, and design/planning of early treatments and interventions; and 3) provide safe, non-invasive measures (biomarkers) that can be used to aid diagnosis and guide the search for genetic/immunological/environmental factors in autism.