SBIR Phase I: Development of a Smart Pacifier to help parents and pediatricians track early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the improved identification of young children who may be at risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Autism is a growing concern as rates continue to increase, however many experts in child development are hopeful that early intervention can help reduce many of the challenges of living with autism. As the brain undergoes important critical periods of development in the first year of life, it is important to try and identify opportunities for intervention as early as infancy. However, infants have limited means to express themselves and it can be difficult for parents and even pediatricians to track the subtle behavioral cues that can be indicative of autism at this early age. The goal of this proposal is to improve access to tools that help make infants developing thinking and social skills more observable to pediatricians and parents. By creating a consumer version of an old technique used by psychologists to understand infant development, this work will increase access to tools to track infants' behaviors related to autism. The proposed project is novel in its repurposing of an established laboratory psychology tool, the nonnutritive sucking paradigm. Basically, psychologists long ago learned that infants will alter their rate of sucking on a pacifier when they are interested in something. Psychologists recorded from a pacifier to gauge what an infant was interested in as well as an infant's growing understanding of language, social interaction, math, and a wide variety of cognitive and social skills. They also allowed infants to control the presentation of sounds or images through their sucking patterns. This SBIR project is creating a more accessible version of this established smart pacifier technique to allow parents and pediatricians to also better track an infant?s interest, preferences, and social and cognitive development. This effort will develop a consumer friendly smart pacifier that can control sounds or images on software or mobile applications. By designing software that replicates the social and cognitive assessment paradigms in psychology laboratories, the smart pacifier system can increase access to objective behavioral assessment tools. Similar to growing evidence in eye-tracking behavior, this behavioral assessment tool can be used to better assess behaviors that have been linked to the future development of autism.