By Jamie L. Freedman
One in 150 children in the United States has an autism diagnosis, and the frequency of the disorder appears to be growing at a rate of 10 to 17 percent, says Francys Subiaul, assistant professor of speech and hearing science.
“Many individuals with autism have a unique set of cognitive impairments, such as problems with communication and social interaction, coupled with exceptional skills, such as amazing rote memory,” says Dr. Subiaul, who is an anthropologist as well as a comparative and developmental psychologist by training. “They are a fascinating population to study.”
In addition to his ongoing research at GW’s Social Cognition Laboratory, where he is leading studies to understand what underlies the imitation learning deficits common in children with autism, Dr. Subiaul was awarded a five-year, $440,870 National Science Foundation Career Award in 2008 to study the evolution of cultural learning in children and great apes. “We are conducting parallel studies to analyze imitation learning in young children as well as gorillas and orangutans at the Smithsonian National Zoo,” he explains.
“Using touch-screen technology, we are targeting how human children and apes learn different types of rules and responses from others. Our ultimate goal is to gain insights into what underlies human cultural uniqueness; in other words, what makes humans human.”
GW freshmen are exploring the world of autism in a Dean’s Seminar led by Dr. Subiaul titled Autism: Insights into Development and Mind. One of 20 Dean’s Seminar offerings this semester for Columbian College of Arts and Sciences freshmen, the course probes the history of autism, as well as the cognitive, behavioral and neural features of the disorder.
Dr. Subiaul has taught the autism seminar for the past three years and is currently redesigning it as an upper-level undergraduate class for next fall. Next semester he will teach another Dean’s Seminar titled Evolution of the Human Mind.
In the coming months, Dr. Subiaul also plans to expand his imitation learning research to infants. “I recently received another National Science Foundation award to conduct parallel studies on eight-to-14-month-old human infants and capuchin monkeys,” he says. “The research will allow us to better pinpoint the age at which we first see the development of social learning skills in humans and other primates.”
He is assisted in his work by a team of dedicated GW undergraduate and graduate students, who collect and analyze data and conduct public demonstrations for zoogoers daily at the National Zoo’s renowned Think Tank. “We couldn’t do what we do without the enthusiasm and dedication of our student interns,” Dr. Subiaul says. “They are the ones who sustain the program long term.”