XII. Karen Emmorey, Ph.D.

The next three presentations related to issues for scientists working with families who have members who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

Karen Emmorey, Ph.D., The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Dr. Emmorey described a successful approach to obtaining informed consent used by the Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience. An important component of this approach is to involve deaf researchers in the studies. This allows deaf subjects to communicate directly with deaf researchers who can also serve as "cultural brokers" between hearing scientists and the deaf community. Dr. Emmorey also described a study with more complex procedures in which the written consent form was translated into American Sign Language and presented to potential deaf subjects on videotape. For this study, deaf subjects had to interact with hearing, non-signing doctors and technicians, and thus independent ASL interpreters were employed so that deaf researchers were available to answer questions, but not act as interpreters. The critical components for obtaining informed consent for the Salk Institute studies were identified as a) the involvement of deaf research assistants and scientists in the studies, b) the use of consent forms which are easy to read and understand, c) where necessary, the additional use of ASL translations of consent forms on videotape, and d) the use of certified ASL interpreters when deaf subjects must interact with non-signing researchers.

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