Sentence Shaping - DHH

Not Applicable

Not yet recruiting

• Conditions: Hearing Loss, Bilateral

• Registration Number: NCT06860022
• Lead Sponsor: Vanderbilt University

Brief Summary

The proposed research addresses a long-standing and important challenge of improving literacy skills of children who are deaf and hard of hearing, a historically under researched group. The investigators aim to leverage shape coding - an empirically validated intervention approach for constructing sentences in spoken English - for improving how efficiently children who are deaf and hard of hearing learn to correctly construct sentences in written English. To advance the promising yet underutilized research on shape coding, the investigators complete the next logical step of applying the visual supports provided with shape coding to written language for deaf and hard of hearing children. Shape coding has been effective for teaching sentence structure in spoken English to children with language disabilities and has recently been applied to sentence structure in American Sign Language with deaf and hard of hearing children. Intervention involving shape coding is predicted to result in increased accuracy of word order in sentences in written English because deaf and hard of hearing children often benefit from visual information. The investigators will accomplish this aim using single case multiple probe across participants design studies with 30 fifth through eighth grade children who are deaf and hard of hearing. The knowledge gained will guide language and literacy intervention for children who are deaf and hard of hearing.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2025-02-27
• Study First Submitted QC: 2025-02-27
• Status Verified: 2025-03
• Study First Posted: 2025-03-05
• Last Update Submitted: 2025-03-06
• Last Update Posted: 2025-03-11
• Study Start: 2025-04
• Primary Completion: 2026-02
• Study Completion: 2026-10

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 30

Inclusion Criteria

• Children in grades five through eight
• deaf or hard of hearing
• use spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL)
• bilateral hearing loss
• the ability to read and understand the grammatical structures of interest
• already be writing sentences, but demonstrate errors in word order and/or grammar.

Exclusion Criteria

• diagnosis of dyslexia
• uncorrected vision impairment (i.e., identified vision loss without use of corrective lenses that interferes with eligibility evaluation tasks)
• evidence of severe motor impairment (i.e., insufficient motor skills to complete eligibility evaluation tasks independently).

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: SINGLE_GROUP

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Proportion of children for whom the intervention is successful	Baseline to up to 8 weeks maximum	The investigators will calculate the proportion of children for whom the intervention is successful, defined as at least 80% accuracy for 3 consecutive data collection days.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Proportion of children that generalize targeted skill to unpracticed words within targeted structure	Baseline to up to 8 weeks maximum	The investigators will calculate the proportion of children that generalize the targeted skill to novel/unpracticed words within the targeted structure.
Proportion of children that generalize targeted skill to unpracticed modality within targeted structure	Baseline to up to 8 weeks maximum.	The investigators will calculate the proportion of children that generalize the targeted skill to an unpracticed modality (i.e., writing, typing) using practiced words within the targeted structure.
Proportion of children that maintain targeted skill after intervention has ended	Begins no more than 2 weeks after intervention phase ends; lasts up to 3 weeks	The investigators will calculate the proportion of children that maintain higher percent accuracy after intervention is removed compared to baseline

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Vanderbilt University Medical Center; 🇺🇸 Nashville, Tennessee, United States