SCH: Deep learning models of child development derived from social video game data

NSF Award Search · 01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $1,025,097 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affects about 1 in 31 children in the United States, yet many children are diagnosed too late to benefit from the most effective early interventions. Existing diagnostic approaches are often slow, resource-intensive, and reliant on limited specialist availability, creating barriers to timely care. Meanwhile, families increasingly use smartphones to capture everyday moments, presenting a unique opportunity to rethink autism detection. Our team’s innovative GuessWhat mobile game, designed to encourage natural play and interaction, has been used by over 500 families and produced a large, growing collection of over 5,000 short videos of young children, including nearly 3,000 videos from children with autism. These rich, real-world videos contain subtle behavioral cues that can be challenging for parents and clinicians to spot but can be harnessed by advanced artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. Our goal is to develop AI tools that automatically analyze these videos to provide accurate, early, and accessible autism risk assessments, ultimately empowering families and clinicians to act sooner and improve outcomes. From a technical perspective, this project will leverage the GuessWhat (GW) dataset to build and validate next-generation AI models for early autism detection in diverse children under 6 years old, eventually expanding to other learning conditions. In Aim 1, we will train specialized deep learning models, each focused on predicting a

Key facts

NSF award ID
2500517
Awardee
Stanford University (CA)
SAM.gov UEI
HJD6G4D6TJY5
PI
Dennis P Wall
Primary program
01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
Smart and Connected Health
Estimated total
$1,025,097
Funds obligated
$1,025,097
Transaction type
Standard Grant
Period
08/15/2025 → 07/31/2028