ABSTRACT
Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children often have limited or delayed access to language during early
childhood, which has harmful consequences for language acquisition and many aspects of child development.
While there have been great strides in technology and available interventions to support language acquisition,
there is still tremendous variability in language skills and development outcomes of DHH children. This is in
part because families have to navigate a complex landscape of early interventions while deciding how best to
support their DHH child. The first aim of this project is to document how families plan and manage language
learning for their children using a series of interviews and surveys. A major challenge in understanding how
best to support DHH children is that without centralized ways to find families, most research studies recruit
participants through organizations like cochlear implant clinics and school programs, and focus on just a
subset of DHH children (e.g., just those learning ASL, or just those using cochlear implants). This raises issues
of sampling bias – children affiliated with a certain program may be quite different from children not affiliated
with that program. The second aim of this study is to use a new database of all identified DHH children
between 0 and 3 years old in California to recruit a large sample that includes children across the full spectrum
of interventions and language backgrounds. We will document patterns in family language planning,
participation in early intervention, and early language skills in whatever language(s) children are learning. This
will provide crucial information about how often children receive various interventions, how often they achieve
age-appropriate language skills, and whether there are any disparities in access to early intervention support
and language outcomes. The third aim is to validate a new multi-lingual language assessment designed for
DHH children. The findings from this study hold the potential to inform evidence-based interventions, enhance
early childhood language planning, and pave the way for improved outcomes and opportunities for DHH
children by fostering their language development and overall well-being.
