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

University of Connecticut

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Hearing Loss; Deafness

Treatments: Behavioral: ASL Services

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT04988451

H20-0037

R01DC016901 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

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

Full 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.

Enrollment: 40 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 2+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

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)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

40 participants in 2 patient groups

ASL Services - Adult ASL Development

Experimental group

Description:

Presence (or absence, across 6-week periods) of ASL services designed to support improvement in ASL fluency

Treatment:

Behavioral: ASL Services

ASL Services - Child Language Development

Experimental group

Description:

Presence (or absence, across 6-week periods) of ASL services designed to support improvement in ASL fluency

Treatment:

Behavioral: ASL Services