News

ADOS-2 in ASL Project Collaboration

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/

Dr. Coppola Working Under AAAS Fellowship!

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.

Projects Accepted for Presentation at Future Events!

Multiple presentations have been accepted for the 49th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development! The following projects were accepted and will be presented at the conference November 7th - 11th, 2024.

  • Pragmatic knowledge in Asymmetric Language Contexts (Poster Presentation)
  • The Role of Language in Building One and Two-Place Predicates: Event Imitation in Homesigners (Stage Talk Presentation)
  • Who did What to Whom? Marking Event Participants in Nicaraguan Homesign Systems (Stage Talk Presentation)

An abstract was accepted as a poster at the Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 15

Congratulations to all involved! We look forward to sharing this research

BRIEF Paper Video

Watch this short video about the results and findings from Corina Goodwin, Emily Carrigan, Kristin Walker, and Marie Coppola’s paper “Language not auditory experience is related to parent-reported executive functioning in preschool-aged deaf and hard-of-hearing children.”

New Paper Published!

Corina Goodwin, Emily Carrigan, Kristin Walker, and Marie Coppola’s paper “Language not auditory experience is related to parent-reported executive functioning in preschool-aged deaf and hard-of-hearing children” was published in the Journal of Child Development. 

This study used the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) as a parent-reported measure of preschool-aged children’s executive function, and investigated the role of language and auditory experience within this measure.

The results showed no difference between children exposed to language at birth, whether that language was spoken or signed. But children who had delayed exposure to language, whether spoken or signed, did tend to have more trouble with executive functioning.

Click the link below to read the paper and find out more about the results!

https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13677

Best Paper in Language 2019 Award!

The best paper in Language 2019 award was given to “The noun-verb distinction in established and emergent sign systems” written by (pictured above, clockwise from upper left) Natasha Abner, Molly Flaherty, Katelyn Stangl, Marie Coppola, Diane Brentari, and Susan Goldin-Meadow. This article was featured in Language Volume 25, Number 2. 

Their article discussed emergent sign systems and highlighted important findings, including: a noun-verb distinction in human communication and how the distinction emerges and develops in a new sign language.

Congratulations to our lab director Dr. Coppola and the other authors as well!

 

Help Us Improve Children’s Learning

Do you have a child with hearing loss between the ages of 2.5-5.5?

Do you live in CT, MA, or RI?

Does your child use spoken English to communicate?

Do you want to be a part of an innovative research project?

If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, consider participating in a new project with UConn’s Study of Language and Math!

New Grants Awarded!

Several of our research assistants have worked diligently on various grant proposals. We are very pleased to announce that our lab was awarded several grants due to their hard work. These grants will help continue our research as we move forward with Project 2.

A huge congratulations to all of our award winners:

PCLB: Bryne-Marie Sidney, Grace Pelletier, and Camilla Baronas

IBACS: Cori Sylvain, Christina Deoss, and Callie Hebert

SHARE: Callie Hebert