Exploring Protactile Language in Early Childhood
May 25, 2022
Happy new year and welcome to our first Protactile Kids Newsletter of 2024. We have been hard at work this past year presenting on our previous findings, hosting training and recruitment events for educators and families with DeafBlind children both in Texas and Arizona, and adding to our online modules. Additionally, now even more of our team has been trained at Tactile Communications in Monmouth, Oregon, deepening our knowledge of Protactile language and culture.
Our team also grew in 2023! Esty Brenowitz, Phoenix Cook, and Rachel Qualls joined the team which currently includes the consultation of Jelica Nuccio, Jaz Herbers, John Lee Clark, Roberto Cabrera, Dr. Jenna Gorlawicz, Dr. Terra Edwards, and Dr. Marie Coppola, our Research team members Marjorie Bates, Jay Rhodes, Jessica Ennis at Gallaudet, and Dr. Jen Tennison and Nicolas Prudencio Rojas at St. Louis University.
Below you’ll find some updates on what we’ve been doing and some of our plans for 2024!
We’re excited to share that a piece we wrote for the Boston University Conference for Language Development has been published. You can read it here! Additionally, part of our team presented a poster at the Society for Research in Child Development with our research findings. Our research leads Hayley Broadway and Deanna Gagne presented on PT Kids and community-focused research at Universidad de Puerto Rico Recinto de Río Piedras. The team also partnered with DeafBlind educators Jaz Herbers, Rhonda Voight-Campbell, Lesley Silva-Kopec, and Roberto Cabrera to host training sessions for educators and parents at both Phoenix and Tucson campuses of the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind.
Our online presence has grown! We are updating the modules at DeafBlindKids.org and new modules will be released shortly. We also now have a link directly to our recruitment page for our current research at PTKids.org. Please share the link with anyone who might know families in Texas or Arizona with DeafBlind children under the age of seven.
Our collaboration with Saint Louis University continues as the SLU team is currently working on engineering prototypes for the technical side of the data we are collecting for our study. We met again as a collaborative team a few weeks ago in Austin and will continue to meet regularly.
We have hosted Protactile social events in Austin, Phoenix and Washington DC this year. These events are a great way to bring the DeafBlind community and anyone interested in Protactile together to get to know one another and learn from each other.
We now have permanent labs at Gallaudet University, Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind, and Phoenix Day School for the Deaf. The labs in Arizona are outfitted with tactile toys, furniture, and other things to make them a kid-friendly place for children participating in our research to meet with DeafBlind Protactile educators.
We are still actively recruiting families with DeafBlind children ages 0-7 to participate in our study about DeafBlind children’s language acquisition. Participation in this study is compensated and families may benefit from access to resources about protactile language, individualized sessions to learn protactile language with a protactile educator, and individualized sessions for their child with a protactile educator. We have flexible options to have these sessions hosted in the classroom or at your home. We continue to visit with families currently participating in the study in Arizona and Texas and our recruitment is ongoing in those locations. Please reach out by email at ptkids@gallaudet.edu if you are interested in participating or know of a family who may be interested!
Have you heard of the term copresence? In Protactile, copresence can be as simple as sitting near one another with knees touching so that two people know that one another is there. It can also mean brushing against other people as you move through space, letting them know where you are going and what you are doing. Two people don’t have to be doing the same activity to be in copresence, they simply need to be willing to let each other know what they are doing through touch.
Protactile names have a different function than names in American Sign Language. They are used frequently to let people know who is around and who is passing by. Therefore, rather than waiting to be given a Protactile name by a DeafBlind person, it’s best to come up with a few ideas and run them by a few members of the DeafBlind community to test them out! If you don’t know where to start, ask a DeafBlind person.
