The research team will conduct three primary activities: develop the Project ASPIRE curriculum guide and multimedia program; assess the feasibility of implementation with early intervention professionals, parents, and children who are D/HH; and conduct a pilot study of the entire intervention to assess the promise of the intervention in improving parent and child outcomes related to language and literacy.
Setting
The field test of the intervention will be conducted in participants' homes in Illinois.
Sample
The sample for the iterative intervention development will consist of racially and ethnically diverse parents of low SES and their 12- to 36-month-old children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Early interventionists who work with this population will also be included in the iterative development of the ASPIRE curriculum.
Project ASPIRE collaborators have developed a 'best-practices' curriculum that will serve as the basis for this project. In a three-stage process, the curriculum will be translated into modules consisting of a multimedia DVD and accompanying curriculum guide. In Stage 1, the curriculum will be adapted into modules that consist of a provider manual, storyboard, and script for animation and parent video. Principles of learning, instructional design, motivation, and presentation will guide module development. Stage 2 will be devoted to generating the multimedia content (i.e., animation, parent videos) and conducting a preliminary pilot on the first three modules. Stage 3 will be a pilot test in which families will be randomly assigned to Project ASPIRE and control conditions.
Control condition
The control condition for the pilot study is a "business as usual" condition. Families in this group will receive the services that are typically provided through their early intervention programs.
Key measures
During each phase, testing for acceptability, feasibility, changes in parent knowledge and behavior, and EI feedback will be used in the iterative development of the intervention. Pilot testing will include quantitative and qualitative assessments of parent and child behavioral outcomes. Key outcomes will include parent language output, conversational turns, child vocalizations, child speech imitation, and child language ability. Parents' knowledge of concepts covered in the curriculum and fidelity of implementation will also be assessed.
Data analytic strategy
The analytic approach will involve qualitative and quantitative analysis of feasibility, acceptability, and parent change data to inform iterative development efforts. Data from the full-scale pilot will be analyzed using an interrupted time series design that will allow the research team to model children's growth as a function of time and maturation. The analysis will assess the effects of participation in the Project ASPIRE intervention using outcome measures collected for parents and children at multiple time points in both the control and experimental condition. Separate analyses will be carried out for parents and children. Repeated measures analysis of variance will be carried out on data collected only at pre- and posttest.
Products: Products will include a fully developed multi-media intervention with a curriculum guide for EI practitioners; data on the feasibility of the use of the intervention with low SES parents and children; and evidence of the potential impact of Project ASPIRE on parents' knowledge and behavior and on children's listening, language, and literacy outcomes. Additionally, products will include reports and presentations on the project.
Book
Suskind, D., Suskind, B., and Lewinter-Suskind, L. (2015). Thirty Million Words: Building a Child's Brain. New York: Dutton.
Journal article, monograph, or newsletter
Leffel, K.R., and Suskind, D.L. (2013). Parent-Directed Approaches to Enrich the Early Language Environments of Children Living in Poverty. doi:10.1055/s-0033-1353443
Suskind D., Leffel, K.R., Hernandez, M.W., Sapolich, S.G., Suskind, E.S., Kirkham, E., and Meehan, P. (2013). An Exploratory Study of ‘Quantitative Linguistic Feedback': Effect of LENA Feedback on Adult Language Production. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 34: 199-209. doi:10.1177/1525740112473146
Suskind, D. L., Graf, E., Leffel, K. R., Hernandez, M. W., Suskind, E., Webber, R.,Tannenbaum, S., and Nevins, M. (2016). Project ASPIRE: Spoken Language Intervention Curriculum for Parents of Low-socioeconomic Status and Their Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children. Otology & Neurotology, 37(2): e110-e117. doi:10.1097/MAO.0000000000000931
Suskind, D., Leffel, K., Graf, E., Hernandez, M., Gunderson, E., Sapolich, S., Suskind, E., Leininger, L., Goldin-Meadow, S., Levine, S.C. (2015). A Parent-Directed Language Intervention for Children of Low Socioeconomic Status: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study. Journal of Child Language, 43(2): 366-406. doi:10.1017/S0305000915000033?
Suskind, D.L., Suskind, E., Sapolich, S., Leffel, K., Repplinger, L., Shay, S., Sacks, C., and Singh, N. (2014). Pilot Testing of a Parent-Directed Intervention (Project ASPIRE) for Underserved Children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 30(1). doi:10.1177/0265659013494873
