Federal Grant Award Summary

Texas Christian University received a $530,054 Project Grant award dated May 15, 2026, from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) under the Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders program (CFDA 93.173). The project, scheduled for completion by April 30, 2031, develops and rigorously evaluates the Computer-Assisted Bilingual Vocabulary Intervention (CABVI)—a technology-driven solution designed to address critical gaps in bilingual speech-language pathology services for emergent bilinguals with developmental language disorder (DLD). CABVI enables monolingual clinicians to deliver standardized, linguistically rich bilingual instruction in Spanish and English by shifting the clinician's role from sole language provider to facilitator, thereby expanding access to evidence-based bilingual intervention for populations currently underserved due to the shortage of bilingual speech-language pathologists.

The research deliverables include a randomized controlled trial comparing vocabulary gains in emergent bilinguals with DLD receiving bilingual CABVI against peers receiving monolingual interventions (traditional English-only therapy or monolingual CABVI), as well as comparative analysis of vocabulary growth between emergent bilinguals with DLD and typically developing bilingual peers. The study aims to establish CABVI's efficacy and ecological validity, ultimately supporting the long-term goal of reducing care disparities for emergent bilinguals with DLD through scalable, technology-based strategies that leverage existing clinical infrastructure.