# Novel Approaches to Infant Screening for ASD in Pediatric Primary Care

> **NIH NIH R01** · DUKE UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $781,763

## Abstract

ABSTRACT – Novel Approaches to Infant Screening for ASD in Pediatric Primary Care
 The overall goal of this project is to develop and validate novel tools to identify risk for
autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in infants 6-12 months of age in a pediatric primary care
setting. Research has confirmed that ASD is associated with changes in brain and behavior
that are evident during infancy, and proof-of-concept studies suggest that early intervention
during the infant period can improve early brain function and developmental outcomes.
Moreover, early universal autism screening has been shown to reduce existing disparities based
on socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnicity/race in access to early diagnosis and treatment.
This project leverages ongoing work that is currently funded as part of the Duke NIH Autism
Center of Excellence (ACE) Award (NICHD P50 HD093074; Dawson, Center Director), which is
evaluating a novel digital phenotyping tool for early ASD risk assessment in toddler-age children
in a pediatric primary care setting. Our novel screening tool, SenseToKnow, is based on active
closed-loop sensing, where children are shown brief, developmentally-appropriate, dynamic
stimuli on a smart tablet or smartphone, while the sensors in the same device capture
information for automatic, objective quantification of several behavioral risk markers, based on
patterns of attention, orienting, affect, vocalizations, and motor behavior. The proposed
research will 1) evaluate a novel infant version of the app, SenseToKnow-Infant, in a large
population of infants in the context of routine pediatric care, and 2) examine the utility of a multi-
modal approach to risk assessment that combines information from SenseToKnow-I with
information from infant and maternal electronic health records (EHRs). Using both direct digital
behavioral measurement via SenseToKnow-I and data readily available in the EHR, we aim to
develop and validate a multimodal ASD risk assessment algorithm for use in infants (6-12
months of age) that can be deployed in the general population.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10227331
- **Project number:** 5R01MH121329-03
- **Recipient organization:** DUKE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Geraldine Dawson
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $781,763
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-15 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10227331

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10227331, Novel Approaches to Infant Screening for ASD in Pediatric Primary Care (5R01MH121329-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10227331. Licensed CC0.

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