We are still learning how best help children with autism early in life.
Andrey Vyshedskiy, lecturer at Boston University, examines the importance of early learning interventions.
Faculty Bio:
Dr. Andrey Vyshedskiy is a neuroscientist at Boston University. He has authored more than 100 original research article published in leading scientific journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine and Nature. His research focuses on child development, the neurological basis of imagination, and the evolution of human language. Dr. Vyshedskiy has founded multiple successful companies and led the development of several FDA-approved medical devices. Building on his research, ImagiRation has developed a novel therapy for children that has been shown to significantly improve language abilities. His most recent book, The Evolution of Language: How the Brain Evolved Syntactic Language from Early Mammals to Homo sapiens, was published in 2025.
Transcript:
In our new study of over 15,000 autistic children, we discovered that syntactic language learning rate drops much earlier in autism. This finding could have important implications for when and how we design early interventions.
We analyzed years of parent-reported developmental data, focusing on Prefrontal Synthesis—a cognitive function that allows children to mentally combine images and understand complex language, such as syntactic sentences, spatial instructions, and narratives. For example, Prefrontal Synthesis lets a child picture “a cat under the sofa” and understand the difference between sentences “the dog chased the boy” and “the boy chased the dog.” Many autistic children struggle with these skills, and our study helps explain why.
Using data from children aged 2 to 22, we found that autistic and neurotypical children showed similar Prefrontal Synthesis learning rates at age 2. However, autistic children’s progress began to decline sharply by around 2.3 years, while neurotypical children continued to learn robustly until about age 7, when the test reached its ceiling. Children with more severe autism showed this decline even earlier, suggesting that the critical period for acquiring PFS is significantly shortened in autism.
Our findings are consistent with evidence of accelerated early prefrontal cortex development in autism, which may prematurely close the brain’s window for mastering syntactic language. These results underscore the importance of beginning interventions before age 3—well before the typical start of therapy around age 4, which is often delayed by diagnostic and waitlist barriers.
Read More:
[Springer Nature] - Age-Dependent Process Governs Executive Function Disability in Autistic Children
