The Child and Family Project is a longitudinal study that is part of the Autism Research Centers of Excellence (STAART) program funded by NIH. This project is under the direction of Alice Carter and Helen Tager-Flusberg.

Project Aims

What are the early signs and symptoms of autism, and what are the most important predictors of the course of development of young children with autism? These are some of the questions addressed in our longitudinal study of 300 toddlers diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders drawn from early intervention programs. The focus in this investigation is not only on the core autism symptoms in social, communicative and behavioral impairments, but also on the heterogeneous patterns of behavior that encompass the full range of social-affective deficits, inclduing both the primary and co-occurring patterns of problem behaviors and competencies found in young children with autism.

We also include in this developmental study measures of temperament, an important social-affective construct that has been neglected in prior autism research. Temperament varies among children with autism, as it does among all children, yet we know little about how individual variation in this domain may mediate and influence the course of development of children with autism in the core social-communicative domains, as well as in the presence of co-occurring symptoms that may be signs of affective disturbance.

The experience of children with autism is embedded in the social/developmental context surrounding the family and in the context of intervention services provided to young children with autism. Thus, this longitudinal study explores these influences on the early developmental course of the children enrolled in this project, and the reciprocal effects of the child on family and parental well-being. By incorporating an assessment of family functioning, the scope of this longitudinal study has been broadened to encompass the ecological context in which children with autism are developing.