CHILDES Clinical English Ambrose Corpus: Hearing Loss

Sophie Ambrose
Center for Childhood Deafness
Boys Town National Research Hospital
sophie.ambrose@boystown.org
website

Participants:	22
Type of Study:	longitudinal treatment study
Location:	Boys' Town
Media type:	Video
DOI:	doi:10.21415/T5BC9C

Citation information

Ambrose, S. E. (2016)

American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 25

In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by the above reference.

Project Description

The overarching goal of this research project is to elucidate the relationships between gesture and spoken language for children with hearing loss. For children with normal hearing, gesture use is predictive of later spoken language outcomes. Additionally, parental gesture use and parental responses to toddlers' gestures support children's linguistic outcomes. For children with hearing loss, the relationships between gesture and spoken language have been largely unexplored. An NIDCD working group identified the need for research on gesture development with this population. The aims of this longitudinal study are to: 1) determine whether the gestural abilities of toddlers with hearing loss predict unique variance in their later spoken language abilities, 2) ascertain the effects of maternal gesture use on the linguistic outcomes of toddlers with hearing loss, and 3) establish the influence of maternal responsiveness to gesture on the spoken language outcomes of toddlers with hearing loss. All of the dyads in which the child has normal hearing (NH group, n = 23) and 18 of the dyads in which the child has hearing loss (HL group) were recruited as part of a previous study on the word learning of children with hearing loss (PI: Mary Pat Moeller). Parents and children were reconsented for use of their data in the current study. An additional eleven dyads in which the child has hearing loss were recruited to increase the size of the HL group. Consent to contribute data to CHILDES was done at a later stage, thus not all participants in the study have data in the CHILDES database (in database: NH group, n = 18, HL group n = 22). Parent-child interactions were recorded when children were approximately 13.5, 18, 22.5, 27, and 36 month of age. This database includes all transcription of speech. Transcripts have also been coded for additional communication, including gesture use and maternal responsiveness. Those transcripts will be contributed to CHILDES at a future date, when all planned analyses are completed. The attached spreadsheet summarizes the ages and hearing status of child participants. For children with HL, the child can be assumed to wear hearing aids unless the visit is after the age at which the spreadsheet indicates the child received a CI. Information for children with HL also includes their better ear pure tone average.

Acknowledgements

Support for the collection and transcription of these language samples was provided by NIDCD R03DC012647, “Contributions of Gesture to the Linguistic Outcomes of Children with Hearing Loss” (S. E. Ambrose, PI) and R01DC006681, "Word Learning in Infants with Hearing Loss” (M. P. Moeller, PI).