Literacy Abilities in Children with Hearing Impairments
This project aims to investigate how students with hearing impairments perform on a battery of reading and language assessments designed to account for reading skills in terms of the Simple View of Reading (Hoover & Gough, 1990). Participants include children who receive auditory impairment services through an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) in grades three through six. Writing abilities will also be investigated as part of this project, specifically, two writing samples will be obtained from each participant to assess both narrative and expository writing. Comparisons between groups of children will be made, specifically children who rely on acoustic input via hearing aids or cochlear implants and children who do not rely on acoustic input such as children who use manual forms of communication. This project is funded by a grant from the board of directors of Language Learning: A Journal of Research Studies in Language.
###The ROW-Lab is currently recruiting children with normal hearing and typical development in 3rd through 6th grades to participate in this research. Please e-mail anthony.koutsoftas@shu.edu if you are interested. Click here for more information.
Improving Writing Outcomes for Children with Language-Based Learning Disabilities (LLD)
Description of project forthcoming.
Project Write to Learn
Project Write to Learn (PWTL) is a federally funded personnel training grant from the Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. PWTL provides an interprofessional learning experience to 8 program scholars (Occupational Therapy and Speech Language Pathology Graduate Students) annually for 5 years, 2017 to 2022. The goal of PWTL is to provide program scholars interdisciplinary coursework, coordinated clinical experiences, and group projects for understanding, assessing, and treating written expression deficits in children with Specific Learning Disabilities such as Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and other Language-based Learning Disabilities. For more information click here.
Writing Process Performance in children with Language Learning Disabilities
This project, funded by the American Speech Language Hearing Foundation, is completed. The purpose of this research was to compare children with and without language learning disabilities on measures selected to represent the writing process. This is important because prior research is limited to writing samples collected in time limited contrived manners whereas the current study provides children extended time to write within and across days. The protocol reflects current instructional practices in writing and allows for the identification of future assessment and intervention targets in writing. Data will be collected in 4th and 6th grade children addressing both developmental and group (TD,LLD) differences. See Koutsoftas (2016) for published findings.
Reading, Writing, and Language Skills of College Freshman
An important consideration for success in higher education is the ability to read, write, and use language, for academic purposes. This study examined reading, oral language, and writing skills in college freshman as a benchmark for College and Career Readiness aligned with the nationwide implementation of the Common Core State Standards. See conference/poster presentation section of the ROW-Lab website for initial findings. Data collection is complete and analyses and manuscript preparation are underway.