This resource page offers information for parents, health professionals, educators, and others about children’s early developmental stages that will help them grow up to reach their full potential.

Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (ECTA)

The ECTA Center supports and provides technical assistance to state Part C and Section 619 programs in developing high-quality early intervention and preschool special education service systems, increasing local implementation of evidence-based practices, and enhancing outcomes for young children with disabilities and their families.

Gallaudet University Division Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (DEDI)

GU’s DEDI works intentionally and collaboratively to provide a safe and welcoming bilingual learning environment where all community members, across the spectrum of identities, accept, appreciate, and affirm the unique experiences, perspectives, and talents of those with whom we share our campus and the world.

National Science Foundation’s Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) at Gallaudet University

Zero to Three

The mission of ZERO TO THREE is to ensure that all babies and toddlers have a strong start in life. ZERO TO THREE works to ensure that babies and toddlers benefit from crucial family and community connections that contribute to their well-being and development.

Language Assessment of Children Who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing Ages Birth Through 8 Years

A report with recommendations by the Advisory Committee who are appointed by the Governor in response to K.S.A. 75-5397e legislation.

National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management (NCHAM)

NCHAM at Utah State University serves as the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI), National Technical Resource Center (EHDI NTRC) funded by Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) at the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The purpose of the EHDI NTRC is to provide support to EHDI programs in states and territories also funded by HRSA, to ensure that children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) are identified through newborn, infant, and early childhood hearing screening and receive the diagnostic and early intervention services they need.

Regional Early Acquisition of Language (REAL) Project

The REAL Project is a collaboration between Gallaudet University’s Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center and Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind (AIDB), which serves nine Southeastern states including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The mission of the REAL Project is to ensure that infants and toddlers ranging in age from birth through 3 years old and who are deaf or hard of hearing have full access to languages, including American Sign Language and English. The first few years of life are critical for language acquisition because it prepares children to be “school- ready” with a foundation of language when they enter school.

Setting Language in Motion: Family Supports and Early Intervention for Babies who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

A free, web-based resource developed as a collaborative effort between the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program of Boston Children's Hospital. Based on the Building Blocks of Intervention webinar series created by the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program at Children's Hospital, the goal is to foster an understanding of the importance of early language acquisition that supports robust linguistic competence and conceptual development in children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

SKI-HI Deaf Mentor Program

The Deaf Mentor Program is an evidence-based, family-centered and proven educational program created and evaluated through support from the US Office of Special Education Programs. The original program was developed in 1991-1993, and has recently been revised to meet current needs of families who have deaf children.

Blaiser, K.M., Behl, D., Callow-Heusser, C., & White, K.R. (2013). Measuring costs and outcomes of tele-intervention when serving families of children who are deaf/hard-of-hearing. International Journal of Telerehabilitation, 5(2), 3-10.

https://doi.org/10.5195/ijt.2013.6129

Optimal outcomes for children who are deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH) depend on access to high quality, specialized early intervention services. Tele-intervention (TI), the delivery of early intervention services via telehealth technology, has the potential to meet this need in a cost-effective manner.

Glickman, N. S., Hall, W. C. (Eds.). (2018). Language deprivation and deaf mental health. New York, NY: Routledge.

This book explores the impact of the language deprivation that some deaf individuals experience by not being provided fully accessible language exposure during childhood. Leading experts in Deaf mental health care discuss the implications of language deprivation for a person's development, communication, cognitive abilities, behavior, and mental health.

Humphries, T., Kushalnagar, P., Mathur, G., Napoli, D. J., Padden, C., Rathmann, C., Smith, S. (2014). Bilingualism: A pearl to overcome certain perils of cochlear implants. Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology, 21, 107–125.

https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-linguistics/88

Cochlear implants (CI) have demonstrated success in improving young deaf children’s speech and low-level speech awareness across a range of auditory functions, but this success is highly variable, and how this success correlates to high-level language development is even more variable. Recent research has highlighted the risks of delaying language input during critical periods of brain development with concomitant consequences for cognitive and social skills. As a result, we propose that before, during, and after implantation deaf children learn a sign language along with a spoken language to ensure their maximal language development and optimal long-term developmental outcomes.

Meyers, J.E. & Bartee, J. W. (1992). Improvements in the Signing Skills of Hearing Parents of Deaf Children. American Annals of the Deaf, 137(3), 257-260.

https://doi.org/10.1353/aad.2012.0462

Most deaf children are born to hearing parents. Yet, many hearing parents are unable to communicate clearly and unambiguously with their deaf offspring. This study looked at changes in the number of parents of deaf offspring who learn sign language, and the signing skills of those parents. It found that over the years the signing skills of these parents have been improving and more parents are now learning sign language.

Lillo-Martin, D.C., Gale, E., & Chen Pichler, D. (2021). Family ASL: An early start to equitable education for deaf children. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education.

https://doi.org/10.1177/02711214211031307

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children experience systematic barriers to equitable education due to intentional or unintentional ableist views that can lead to a general lack of awareness about the value of natural sign languages and insufficient resources supporting sign language development. In this position paper, attention is drawn to deep societal biases about language in the information presented to parents of DHH children, against early exposure to a natural sign language.

Snoddon, K. (2008). American Sign Language and early intervention. Canadian Modern Language Review, 64(4), 581-604.

https://doi.org/10.1353/cml.0.0005

Concerns have been raised that hearing screening and early intervention programs may not provide a well-informed or adequate range of options for families with deaf children in Ontario, Canada. This paper presents an applied linguistics perspective on early intervention policies and programs for deaf children.

Watkins, S., Pittman, P., & Walden, B. (1998). The Deaf mentor experimental project for young children who are deaf and their families. American Annals of the Deaf, 143(1), 29-34.

https://doi.org/10.1353/aad.2012.0098

The Deaf Mentor Experimental Project investigated the efficacy of deaf mentor services to young deaf children and their families. These services focused on deaf adults (mentors), who made regular home visits to the children and their families; shared their language (American Sign Language), culture, and personal knowledge of deafness with the families; and served as role models for the children.

Hall, M. L., Eigsti, I., Bortfeld, H., Lillo-Martin, D. (2017). Auditory access, language access, and implicit sequence learning in deaf children. Developmental Science, 21(3), 1-12.

https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12575

The Auditory Scaffolding Hypothesis asserts that a lack of auditory stimulation in deaf children leads to impoverished implicit sequence learning abilities, measured via an artificial grammar learning (AGL) task. However, prior research is confounded by a lack of both auditory and language input. The current study examines implicit learning in deaf children who were (Deaf native signers) or were not (oral cochlear implant users) exposed to language from birth, and in hearing children, using both AGL and Serial Reaction Time (SRT) tasks.

McCarthy, M., Muñoz, K. & White, K.R. (2010). Teleintervention for infants and young children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Pediatrics, 126, 52-58.

https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2010-0354J

Some schools for Deaf students have begun adapting a telehealth/tele-intervention approach to deaf mentoring, using an online platform to provide home visits and ASL lessons to families who might otherwise be unable to receive these services.

Mitchell, R.E. & Karchmer, M.A. (2004). When parents are deaf versus hard of hearing: Patterns of sign use and school placement of deaf and hard-of-Hearing children. The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 9(2), 133–152.

https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enh017

This paper investigates the importance of knowing whether or not deaf and hard-of-hearing students have one or more deaf or hard-of-hearing parents. Further, signing in the home, which is reliably predicted by parental hearing status, is a significant predictor of the school setting in which the student is currently placed and the instructional use of signing in the classroom.

The Joint Committee on Infant Hearing. (2019). Year 2019 position statement: Principles and guidelines for early hearing detection and intervention programs. The Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention, 4(2), 1–44.

https://doi.org/10.15142/fptk-b748

Published in the Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI), the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing (JCIH) position statement is developed by leading medical and educational organizations. Best practices in early intervention are noted, which also includes the importance of involvement of Deaf professionals and early language access, along with the consideration of infant and family mental health approaches with deaf and hard of hearing babies and their families.

Snoddon, K. (2014). Telling deaf lives: Agents of change. Gallaudet University Press.

The 8th Deaf History International Conference in 2012 featured 27 presentations from members of Deaf communities hailing from 12 different countries around the world who related their own autobiographies as well as the biographies of historical Deaf individuals. Their stories share a transnational collection, documentation, and dissemination of Deaf History by and for members of the deaf community.

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Early Intervention Resources