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Admission to this internship program is by application only and is at the discretion of the individual research scientists - space is limited. The program is open to all undergraduates at Rutgers and NJIT. Specific course of skill prerequisites will vary by instructor.
For more information, contact Connie Sadaka
at 973-353-1080 x 3294 |
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Research Opportunities: April Benasich
Research Overview -
The research in my laboratory focuses on uncovering the neural processes necessary for normal cognitive and language development. Our ongoing longitudinal studies examining perceptual-cognitive abilities (habituation, recognition memory, cross-modal transfer) and auditory temporal processing in infancy are directed at examining how these abilities relate to later cognitive, linguistic, and behavioral outcomes in both normal infants and infants at risk for developmental delays. Early intervention programs, their impact on children and families, and the social policy implications of such interventions is also an ongoing research focus.
Studies in infant monkeys have shown that lesions in the amygdala and thalmus can impair visual attention and recognition memory, including poor performance on preferential looking tasks. Performance on tasks requiring memory for location, in particular, delayed response tasks, is impaired in both monkey and human infants when damage to the caudate nucleus is sustained. Subcortical damage (due to interventricular hemorrhage) in preterm infants has been shown in a number of recent studies to affect habituation functions as well as recognition memory. Moreover, recent research also suggests that the morphological abnormalities in the caudate may play a part in temporal processing deficits. Deficits in attention, memory, and language may also result from disruption of connections between subcortical areas and the prefrontal cortex. However, studies based on global neurological exams and standard infant tests (such as the Bayley Scales) generally show no significant differences in neurocognitive outcomes. More sensitive measures tapping information processing, derived from perceptual-cognitive paradigms, can be used to systematically examine the infant's ability to discriminate, categorize, and abstract information and have been shown to predict to later cognitive delays or deficits and to specific linguistic outcomes. Research findings that perceptual-cognitive abilities in infants are predictive of neurocognitive and language outcomes may be specifically related to the ability of these measures to assess "speed of processing". Similarly, studies with language impaired children implicate a specific deficit in rate of sensory and perceptual information processing. Therefore, we are particularly interested in examining the role of speed of processing in infant neurocognitive status and its subsequent impact on later neurological, cognitive and linguistic functioning. Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in children, also referred to as developmental dysphasia, is characterized by a relatively specific failure of normal language functions in the absence of such factors as deafness, mental retardation, motor disability, childhood schizophrenia, or infantile autism. Highly significant and persistent deficits have been shown in the ability of children with language disorders, specifically SLI, to process rapidly changing non-verbal auditory stimuli. SLI children have been shown to be selectively impaired in their ability to both perceive and produce those speech sounds which are characterized by brief or rapidly changing temporal cues in their acoustic spectra. The degree of temporal processing deficit has also proved to be highly correlated with the degree of language comprehension deficits over a broad age range of SLI individuals. These findings suggest that auditory temporal processing deficits could serve as a behavioral "marker" of language impairment and could be useful in early identification of language impairment. We have developed an infant operant conditioning paradigm that facilitates assessment of auditory temporal processing (ATP) in the first year of life. We are examining the ability of infants (normal full-term infants, preterm infants, very low birthweight infants, infants with an family history of language impairments, infants with focal brain lesions) to process rapidly changing acoustic stimuli as well as the relationship of these abilities to early language development. Recurrent Acute Otitis Media or repeated ear infections with collection of fluid in the middle ear (middle ear effusion) during the first year can produce language and speech delays as a function of poor hearing. Many children go on to have normal hearing and normal language. However, a higher percentage of children who have repeated episodes of otitis media subsequently are found to have specific language impairment. Conversely, children with LI and dyslexia are more likely to have a history of recurrent otitis media. It may be the case that the alteration of speech sounds caused by such cyclic hearing changes could produce learned deficits in auditory temporal processing. In essence, the fluctuating hearing loss during the early years may present the child with a speech signal that is more diffuse and thus more difficult to process. This may be particularly critical if it occurs in the first year when the infant is establishing speech and language categories. Thus, we are also studying the temporal processing and language abilities of a cohort of infants
More Information -
Webpage:
April Benasich |