Mailman Center for Child Development Faculty Awarded Dual Grants to Improve Language Skills for Children with Hearing Loss

April 8, 2021

Investigators Dr. Lynn Perry and Dr. Daniel Messinger at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology have been awarded federal funding to study the development of children with hearing loss at the University of Miami's Debbie Institute, which is affiliated with Mailman Center for Child Development. Children with hearing loss are less likely to read at grade-level than their typically hearing peers'a gap that exists as early as preschool.

In a new multi-site R01 funded by the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD); University of Miami, along with collaborators at University of Washington, Washington State University, and Rush University Medical Center will investigate predictors of emerging language and literacy skills in preschoolers with and without hearing loss. Dr. Lynn Perry will lead the UM team to study these language and literacy skills in 3-5-year old children attending the UM Debbie School. Dr. Perry indicated that "these projects will, for the first time, shed light on day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and minute-to-minute interactions that promote the social and linguistic development of children with hearing loss and promote their ultimate academic success."