SPARK Fellowship

2025 SPARK Fellows

• Leen Al-Jame
• Jada Gardner
• Sarah-Beth Johnson
• Crystal Mathew
• Princesse Muteba
• Ayomide Olukosi
• Sara Rebollo Diaz
• Daniel Sanchez

2025 SPARK Research Projects

Leen Al-Jame

Girls with autism are often underdiagnosed, misdiagnosed, or diagnosed later in life than boys, limiting access to early intervention and affecting long-term outcomes such as mental health, education, employment, and independence. For my project, I am exploring gender differences in early autism traits to better understand how diagnostic tools may contribute to these disparities. Specifically, I am analyzing scores from the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition (ADOS-2), a commonly used diagnostic tool. My research will explore how preschool-aged autistic boys and girls differ across algorithm scores in the Social Affect and Restricted and Repetitive Behavior domains. By comparing ADOS-2 scores across genders, I aim to examine how current diagnostic criteria may overlook or mischaracterize autistic traits in girls. Understanding these patterns can support more accurate, gender-informed assessment procedures and support timely identification, ultimately improving access to appropriate services and outcomes for autistic girls.

Jada Gardner

In Gartstein and Rothbart’s parent survey temperament measure (2003), effortful control is an aspect of temperament that represents a child’s ability to self-regulate. It is a measure of how intentional and successful a child is at soothing oneself. In families that value familism—which is the moral belief that the family’s needs must come before one’s own needs—it can be theorized that a child might suppress their emotions for the benefit of the family and not actually be self-regulating. My research question will investigate if there is a correlation between high familism parenting beliefs and high effortful control in parent reports of their children’s temperament. The goal of this research is to explore the extent to which parental beliefs influence children’s self-regulating abilities. This research will tell us how to more effectively measure effortful control and will explore the impact of emotional suppression in families with high familism.

Sarah-Beth Johnson

My research explores how parents’ traditional beliefs about child obedience relate to their child’s early social behaviors and language development and if a child’s age affects this relationship. Children’s early development matters! Social skills deficits in young children have been linked to anxiety, depression, cognitive delays, and increased loneliness, while language deficits are associated with reading and writing difficulties, emotional challenges, and behavioral problems. Left unaddressed, these early challenges can evolve into emotional and behavioral problems during adolescence, increasing the likelihood of risky behaviors that may impact long-term well-being. To research the connection between parenting beliefs of children’s obedience and children’s social and language outcomes, I am analyzing parent responses to a parenting beliefs survey and child temperament questionnaires, along with children’s developmental screening results and observational data from their participation in the Play with Me program. I hope to better understand how parenting beliefs may shape a child’s developmental trajectory, at what age this is most impactful, and how parents and practitioners can contribute to conversations around family engagement and early intervention. I hope this research will have an impact on parenting knowledge and support early interventions that promote healthier developmental outcomes and reduce the risk of long-term challenges.

Crystal Mathew

Parents are the first to raise concerns about how their child is doing, which is very valuable, but there can be some inconsistency in what they think and how their child is actually doing. My research will look at the accuracy of parents’ concerns in reflecting children’s language abilities. Specifically, I will look at children’s scores on the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MCDI), which are screening tools used for early detection/intervention, and how well parents’ concerns match up with their child’s actual language skills. I’m also interested in seeing if there is a difference in parent concerns between kids with delays and those who are just late talkers. Some children with delays will catch up with their peers in terms of language and communication, but some children will continue to find challenges throughout their life. The earlier we can identify this and provide support, the sooner we can set children up for success. My hope is that this research will allow us to take a step toward easier and more accurate support for children who need it most.

Princesse Muteba

Screening tools are important because they help to point us in the right direction to support our kids’ optimal development. My research looks at the ASQ and MCDI, two tools used in screening children’s development, to see how effective they are at identifying ‘late talkers’. A ‘late talker’ is a child who experiences difficulties communicating their needs and wants verbally and nonverbally when compared to children their age. This language difficulty can reduce children’s school readiness and has been shown to impact children’s reading and math scores later in life. My research will help identify strengths of the ASQ and MCDI for identifying late talking. Ultimately, I hope this research inspires the creation of better screeners to identify late talkers even earlier to put them on the best track for their success.

Ayomide Olukosi

Temperament, not to be confused with personality, is an individual biological marker that influences behavior, usually first observable during early childhood. Personality, on the other hand, goes beyond biology and includes experiences, beliefs, and so on that also influences behavior. As identified by Rothbart’s model, the three main dimensions of temperament are surgency (characterized by high activity levels), negative affectivity (likeliness to display negative emotions, e.g., frustration), and effortful control (ability to self-regulate emotions). My research question explores which of these traits would be the strongest predictor of a developmental delay on the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ), which is a developmental screener for children. Because a child’s temperament and development may influence each other, I aim to identify the trait most closely linked to delays, enabling us to enhance early screening and provide children with the most appropriate support.

Sara Rebollo Diaz

Have you ever thought about how you were raised or the beliefs that will impact your parenting in the future? Parenting beliefs have an effect on the amount of autonomy that a child experiences and the obedience that they convey. My research project focuses on traditional parental beliefs about child obedience and autonomy in relation to a playful learning program called Play With Me. Play With Me is a 12-week program for 0-3 year old children and their families that teaches families about their child’s development and promotes children’s independence and self-reliance. My research will investigate traditional beliefs of parenting (strict authority, complete obedience, and following strict rules) and its relation to what parents want to learn and what they want their children to get out of the Play With Me program. This is important because understanding parents’ beliefs about children’s independence and obedience will allow programs like Play With Me to have an even larger impact on families’ understanding of autonomy and obedience.

Daniel Sanchez

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MCDIs) are widely used to assess vocabulary abilities in infants and toddlers. Bilingual Spanish-English children must complete both the English and Spanish versions which are normed for monolingual children, thus not all words on the English form appear on the Spanish forms and vice-versa. From these assessments, two types of scores can be generated: total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary. A total vocabulary score reflects the full set of words a child knows across both languages, and a conceptual vocabulary score counts the individual concepts they understand, regardless of the language. Recently however, the Dual Language Learners Spanish-English (DLL-ES) Inventories were developed as a bilingual-specific tool for Spanish-English infants and toddlers, featuring a translation equivalence where all words have a matching pair in both languages. My research project aims to identify the most accurate scoring approach and tool for assessing bilingual Spanish-English children’s language abilities. The findings from my project may guide clinicians in choosing more appropriate assessment methods and scoring procedures to capture a bilingual Spanish-English child’s unique vocabulary abilities.