No autism assessment instrument is validated for use with Deaf/ Hard of Hearing children in the US. The ADOS-2 in ASL project aims to adapt ADOS-2 (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule - Second Edition), a tool for assessing autism into ASL (American Sign Language).

Dr. Marie Coppola and Dr. Inge-Marie Eigsti presented this project "Challenges in Assessing Autism Spectrum Disorder in Deaf Individuals: Adapting the ADOS-2 into ASL" at the 6th Annual Language First Conference, Natick, MA in 2023. 

Learn more about this project's mission, goals and resources here! https://cedar.uconn.edu/autism_assesment_in_asl/

Congratulations to Dr. Marie Coppola for being awarded a fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science! She is working as the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences under the Division of Social and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF) as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellow. 

She was recently in D.C working on disability policy under this fellowship! Read more in this UConn Today article.

Congrats to Maddie on a successful dissertation defense of “Pragmatic Usage and Event Representation in Nicaraguan Homesign Systems”! 

Dr. Coppola gave presented on "The context of Transmission Matters in the Creation and Evolution of Language"  at The Evolution of Language Conference in Madison, WI! 

Marie Coppola and other UConn researchers want to understand the science behind how early access to language affects learning in deaf and hearing children.

Read more about their research, methods and goals in this UConn Today article!