Research led by a Phonoaudiology academic seeks to characterize children within the autism spectrum at preschool age

This project already has an Initiation Fund awarded.

Florencia Moya, UANDES.- The academic of the School of Phonoaudiology and the Department of Epidemiology and Health Studies, Veronica Vidalan Initiation Fondecyt was awarded, thanks to the investigation entitled “Exploring New Objective Measures to Characterize Verbal and Minimally Verbal Preschoolers on the Autism. Spectrum: A potential contribution to early diagnosis.”

This project aims to explore objective measures to characterize preschool-age children within the autism spectrum, with the long-term goal of finding potential markers for early diagnosis.

“We are currently finishing the first stage, which is descriptive, working with three groups; typically developing children, children on the autism spectrum with a verbal profile, and minimally verbal children also on the autism spectrum. We are describing them in spontaneous speech, that is, how they communicate in their typical life.”, explains the researcher.

In the second stage of this work, more experimental measurements will be sought. “We will begin to measure the acoustic patterns of the voice and perform electrophysiological measurements in our study groups.”, adds Verónica Vidal.

Regarding the award, the academic from the School of Phonoaudiology comments that it is an achievement and at the same time a challenge that will allow her to carry out high-level research.

“Having awards from prestigious competitive funds, such as the Fondecyt, is an important achievement and, furthermore, it is a tremendous opportunity to have resources to carry out research that if the resources were not available it would be much more difficult to carry them out.”, details the academic.

Along the same lines, Verónica points out that “it is also the fruit of an effort that is always collective, because one in research does not work alone. Although the awarding of the Initiation Fondecyt are personal awards, there is always a team behind that helps to make this possible. There are also teams of advisors behind it, which are super important so that young researchers like me can apply for the award by presenting projects of sufficient quality to be awarded.”.