Family ASL: Longitudinal Study of Deaf Children and Hearing Parents Who Receive Services to Support the Learning of ASL

Not Applicable

Recruiting

• Conditions: Deafness; Hearing Loss
• Interventions: Behavioral: ASL Services

• Registration Number: NCT04988451
• Lead Sponsor: University of Connecticut

Brief Summary

This study examines the development of American Sign Language by deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children and their parents.

Detailed Description

After being informed about the study and potential risks, adult participants who give written informed consent and children whose parents who give written permission will be enrolled in the study. They will participate in preliminary language tasks to assess baseline performance on American Sign Language (ASL) measures. Subsequently they will have weekly sessions with an ASL Specialist to support their development of ASL, following a 6-week on/6-week off ABABABAB sequence.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2021-07-20
• Study First Submitted: 2021-07-26
• Study First Submitted QC: 2021-07-26
• Study First Posted: 2021-08-03
• Status Verified: 2023-07
• Last Update Submitted: 2023-07-19
• Last Update Posted: 2023-07-20
• Primary Completion: 2024-03-31
• Study Completion: 2024-06-30

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 40

Inclusion Criteria

Children:

• Children ages 2;00 - 2;11 at the start of the longitudinal project
• Child is Deaf/ Hard-of-Hearing
• Participating in a program utilizing a bimodal bilingual philosophy

Adults:

• One adult caregiver for each child

Exclusion Criteria

• Children with previously-diagnosed conditions other than deafness known to affect language and cognitive development
• Families without access to internet (at home or other locations)

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: SINGLE_GROUP

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
ASL Services - Child Language Development	ASL Services	Presence (or absence, across 6-week periods) of ASL services designed to support improvement in ASL fluency
ASL Services - Adult ASL Development	ASL Services	Presence (or absence, across 6-week periods) of ASL services designed to support improvement in ASL fluency

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Change from Baseline in ASL Phonological Production Accuracy over 12 Months	Baseline and 12 months	Participants copy ASL signs produced on video; their productions are scored for phonological accuracy and reported as percent correct out of all possible phonological features. Weekly measures are taken for SCD analysis.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Change from Baseline in ASL Production Frequency over 12 Months	Baseline and 12 months	Participants engage in naturalistic play sessions which are videorecorded. Sessions are analyzed for the number of productions in ASL over a 15-minute period. Weekly measures are taken for SCD analysis.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

University of Connecticut - Department of Linguistics; 🇺🇸 Storrs, Connecticut, United States