Language, Literacy, and Executive Function in Autism (LEXA) Lab
The LEXA Lab focuses on understanding and promoting language, literacy and communication development in autistic children, with a particular focus on the interaction with executive function. The overarching goal of all the research projects is to empower autistic children to become effective learners and communicators.
LEXA Lab is a research group at Georgia State University studying language, literacy, and executive function in children with autism and children with neurodevelopmental differences. We work with families to understand how children communicate, learn to read, and build skills, and to bring those findings to families, educators, and clinicians.
We investigate the neurobiological and developmental mechanisms underlying receptive and expressive language development in autistic children. Our goal is to better understand the factors that contribute to the heterogeneous language profiles across the autism spectrum.
We study how structural language skills and executive function contribute to literacy development in autistic children. By identifying the unique pathways that shape various reading and writing outcomes, we aim to inform evidence-based strategies that support autistic children’s literacy development at school and at home.
We examined how executive function skills, such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, and attention support language and literacy development as well as everyday communication in autistic children. Our research seeks to identify how these cognitive processes influence learning and communication in preschool- and school-aged autistic children.
Research isn't just about data. It's about what the findings can do. Our work aims to develop better educational resources, more effective support strategies, and a clearer understanding of how children with autism develop language and literacy.
Our team includes faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate research assistants across special education, educational psychology, developmental psychology, and communication sciences.
Principal Investigator
Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Research Assistant
Our Project READ: Receptive and Expressive Assessment of Narrative Discourse in Autism has been officially approved by GSU IRB! We are recruiting autistic children between 5 and 8 years old to participate in a remote study on language and literacy development.
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