Effects of the Accessible Literacy Learning (ALL) App on Early Literacy Skills by Children Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Penn State University1 site in 1 country50 target enrollmentOctober 1, 2022

ConditionsLiteracy

Overview

Phase: N/A
Intervention: Not specified
Conditions: Literacy
Sponsor: Penn State University
Enrollment: 50
Locations: 1
Primary Endpoint: Change from Baseline Scores on the Early Literacy Assessment
Status: Enrolling by Invitation
Last Updated: last year

Overview Investigators Eligibility Criteria Outcomes Sites Similar Trials

Overview

Brief Summary

The goal of this clinical trial is to test a phonics-based literacy program for children with limited or no speech who use augmentative and alternative communication.

More specifically, this study aims to:

Understand if using a literacy app (Accessible Literacy Learning) created to support individuals with limited or no speech, with instruction provided by a service provider, will increase their literacy skills
Understand how many trials/how much time it takes to acquire each of the 6 early literacy skill assessed
Understand if service providers think the Accessible Literacy Learning app is appropriate for this population that needs many literacy adaptions due to challenges with speech.
Understand if any characteristics lead to more learning of the skills, for example, diagnosis or age

Participants will be asked to complete 100 lessons using the app. The lessons will be phonics-based for the intervention group. The comparison group with use the same app and complete 100 lessons, but will only complete lessons in sight word (no phonics).

Registry

clinicaltrials.gov

Start Date

October 1, 2022

End Date

June 2025

Last Updated

last year

Study Type

Interventional

Study Design

Parallel

Sex

All

Investigators

Sponsor

Penn State University

Responsible Party

Principal Investigator

Jessica Caron

Assistant Professor

Penn State University

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

•Students with CCN can participate if they meet the following criteria:
•3 to 10 years old
•present with speech and communication skills that did not meet all of their daily communication needs (e.g., have an AAC system; less than 50% intelligible at the single word level to unfamiliar partners if using speech)
•follow one-step directions
•symbolic communicators with use of at least 50 words/signs/picture icons expressively,
•limited literacy skills (i.e., identify less than 26 letter-sound correspondences, 10 words during sound blending, 25 sight words on the screening assessment, and can spell less that 20 words)
•not receiving consistent phonologically-based direct literacy instruction or receiving instruction in less than 2 of the tested skills
•unimpaired or corrected vision and hearing
•access to an iPad
•School support personnel (e.g., teachers, speech-pathologists, paraprofessionals) can participate if they meet the following criteria, per self-report:

Exclusion Criteria

•Students cannot participate if they:
•are under 3 years of age
•do not present with severe speech disorders whereby they could use or benefit from AAC
•can't follow one-step directions
•are not symbolic communicators
•are able to read at the connected text level
•do not speak/understand English
•impaired and uncorrected vision and hearing
•do not have access to an iPad to use the ALL app
•Support personnel cannot participate if they:

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Change from Baseline Scores on the Early Literacy Assessment

Time Frame: Through study completion, an average of 8 months

We will examine the impact of literacy lessons delivered with the ALL technology on the change in scores on the Early Literacy Assessment (ELA) -specifically change in scores in the areas of letter-sounds, sound blending, phoneme segmentation, decoding, irregular sight words, and encoding.

Secondary Outcomes

Treatment and Acceptability Rating Form - Revised(Through study completion, an average of 8 months)
Data from the Feasibility Adoption Acceptability Questionnaire (FAAQ)(Through study completion, an average of 8 months)