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Protactile language acquisition research supported by…
Protactile language acquisition research supported by $2.5 million NIH grant
Sep 30, 2022
By Robert Weinstock
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Dr. Deanna Gagne, a faculty member in the Linguistics program, working with deafblind community co-investigator Hayley Broadway, E-’05 & G-’18, has been awarded a $2.5 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate the trajectory of Protactile language acquisition for DeafBlind children aged 0-5 years old.
Protactile is a new, fully tactile language that has been emerging among DeafBlind adults over the last 15 years. However very few DeafBlind children have had any opportunity to learn Protactile up to mpw. Protactile is now very different from ASL in many new and exciting ways. This new project will work with families and schools to provide support and direct learning from DeafBlind adults fluent in protactile, with a goal of learning how DeafBlind children can learn Protactile.
Broadway, from Touch Seeds, takes on the role of Lead Project [...]