Federal Grant Award Summary

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) awarded a $717,468 Project Grant to The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute on May 15, 2026, under the Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders program (CFDA 93.173). The project, extending through April 30, 2031, will investigate verbal and non-verbal predictors of successful peer-to-peer communication among 560 autistic and non-autistic youth. The research leverages advanced digital phenotyping techniques, including manual coding of intra-speaker conversational alignment and computer vision-driven analysis of between-speaker multi-modal synchrony, to examine how the integration of facial expressions, vocal characteristics, and language features predict self-reported conversational success and satisfaction across neurotype-concordant and neurotype-discordant interactions.

This initiative addresses a significant gap in communication research by analyzing language in its naturalistic, multi-modal context rather than in isolation. The project combines expertise in conversational analysis with computational approaches applied to video-based dataset of peer interactions, with the goal of advancing understanding of how autistic and non-autistic individuals integrate verbal and non-verbal communication elements. Findings are expected to inform intervention development and enhance understanding of communication outcomes in adolescent populations across neurotypes.