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

NCT04988451 | Active Not Recruiting

• 2 other identifiers: H20-0037R01DC016901
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 40
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

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

Conditions

Deafness; Hearing Loss

Keywords

language; sign language; language development; child language; child, preschool; parents; caregivers

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Change from Baseline in ASL Phonological Production Accuracy over 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.

  Baseline and 12 months

Secondary Outcomes (1)

• Change from Baseline in ASL Production Frequency over 12 Months

  Baseline and 12 months

Study Arms (2)

ASL Services - Adult ASL Development

EXPERIMENTAL

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

Behavioral: ASL Services

ASL Services - Child Language Development

EXPERIMENTAL

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

Behavioral: ASL Services

Interventions

ASL Services BEHAVIORAL

ASL specialist meets with participants and provides ASL instruction

ASL Services - Adult ASL Development; ASL Services - Child Language Development

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 2 Years+
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: No
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• 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

You may not qualify if:

• 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)

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Connecticut: lead
• National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD): collaborator

Study Sites (1)

University of Connecticut - Department of Linguistics

Storrs, Connecticut, 06268, United States

Location

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Deafness; Hearing Loss; Language; Sign Language

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Hearing Disorders; Ear Diseases; Otorhinolaryngologic Diseases; Sensation Disorders; Neurologic Manifestations; Nervous System Diseases; Signs and Symptoms; Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms; Communication; Behavior; Manual Communication; Nonverbal Communication

Study Officials

• Diane C Lillo-Martin, Ph.D.

  University of Connecticut

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NON RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: TREATMENT
• Intervention Model: SINGLE GROUP
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: BOT Distinguished Professor

Model Details: Single Case Design - interrupted time series. Participants will receive intervention in 6-week on/off blocks. Measurements are taken in both on and off weeks. The Bayesian procedure developed by Swaminathan et al. (2014) involves fitting piece-wise linear or curvilinear trends across the phases, modeling dependencies in the observations with a suitably chosen autoregressive error scheme, and using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to obtain the posterior distributions of the model parameters and effect size measures

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: July 26, 2021
• First Posted: August 3, 2021
• Study Start: July 20, 2021
• Primary Completion: November 30, 2025
• Study Completion: November 30, 2025
• Last Updated: July 11, 2025

Record last verified: 2025-07

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Time Frame: After (or with) publication of the results
• Access Criteria: De-identified numerical coding scores will be shared using an open science site that is generally accessible

Locations

US (1)