# Temporal dyadic processes in autism risk and treatment

> **NIH NIH F31** · PURDUE UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $46,036

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
 Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is currently one of the most heritable, heterogeneous, and prevalent
childhood psychopathologies and is characterized by social communicative difficulties, as well as restricted,
repetitive behaviors. However, many of these communicative and behavioral difficulties may not fully manifest
until later in development. My long-term goal is to improve children’s developmental trajectories by identifying
early social difficulties within the first two years to better inform behavioral targets within ongoing intervention
efforts (e.g., responsiveness; joint attention). Copious research highlights that difficulties in early social
exchanges inform later developmental difficulties in language, cognition, and more advanced social
communication exchanges. However, the behavioral methods we currently use to assess mean-level social
difficulties (e.g., average vocal exchanges) in young children are often limited by inconsistent findings, sample
constraints, and large heterogeneity across children/families. This measurement limitation inevitably
complicates our interpretations of which social behaviors are (1) indicative of later ASD diagnosis, and (2)
which behaviors should be the focus of intervention efforts. Until recently, available methods to accurately and
precisely describe dyadic interactions have been limited- and it is widely recognized that dyadic interactions
are not fully captured by mean-level statistics (e.g., total frequency of eye contact). Thus, the overall objective
of the proposed study is to apply two distinct temporal-based dyadic methodologies (i.e., state space grids;
time varying effect modeling) to existing dyadic data in order to sequentially capture the unfolding temporal
pattern present within parent-child interactions in elevated-risk samples. The central goal of this study is to
improve current measurement recommendations by providing sequential-based representations of early social
exchanges during play, in both developmental monitoring (Aim 1) and parent-mediated intervention (Aim 2)
contexts. The proposed study is innovative in its application of two temporal-based dyadic methodologies that
have never been applied in elevated-risk samples. At its core, ASD is a social disorder and improving our
understanding of how these social difficulties unfold over the first two years of life has the potential to
significantly impact our current field recommendations for optimizing children’s social development within
ongoing identification and intervention contexts.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10227945
- **Project number:** 5F31HD101282-02
- **Recipient organization:** PURDUE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Ashleigh Kellerman
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $46,036
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-09-01 → 2022-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10227945

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10227945, Temporal dyadic processes in autism risk and treatment (5F31HD101282-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10227945. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*