Communication Deviances and Clarity Among the Mothers of Normally Achieving and Learning‐Disabled Boys.

Abstract

The main purpose of the study was to reexamine the association between maternal communication deviances and learning disabilities in children. In this study, we adapted and extended the procedure used by Ditton, Green, and Singer (1987). A two-part experimental task was used: one in which the child could not request any clarification of mother's instructions, and another in which the mother and child could communicate. Both communication deviances and the clarity of mothers' communication were analyzed. The subjects were 60 mother-child pairs in which half of the children had learning disabilities and the other half were normally achieving children matched for age and parents' SES. The dyads were videotaped in a laboratory setting. The mothers of learning-disabled (LD) children were found to give less exact instructions and to present more ambiguous messages to the child than the mothers of non-LD children. Despite the more inaccurate input from their mother, the LD boys did not request clarification for ambiguous statements any more than did the NLD boys.

Language Problems in Children with Learning Disabilities

“…To give a reference point for comparison to an average-achieving population, Figures 1, 2, and 3 also show the performance of 30 dyads of averageachieving boys and their mothers (see Rasku-Puttonen et al, 1994) on the same variables. These boys did not manifest learning problems and they had not received remedial teaching.…”

“…The participants were selected from a pool of 30 boys who in the course of their visits to the clinic had participated in the mother-child interaction study (Lyytinen et al, 1994;Rasku-Puttonen et al, 1994) and had completed four dyadic videotaped tasks with their mothers. The existence of a discrepancy between the verbal (VIQ) and performance intelligence quotients (PIQ) on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R; Wechsler, 1974) was used as the criterion for subgrouping.…”

Intrusiveness and Closeness‐Caregiving: Rethinking the Concept of Family “Enmeshment”

“…However, rather than trying to assess both sets of variables on purportedly neutral dimensions or on bipolar dimensions (as implied by structural theory's single boundary clarity continuum), we believe this enterprise will require separately assessing pathology‐related aspects of connectedness (such as intrusiveness) and health‐related aspects of connectedness (such as closeness‐caregiving and openness of communication). For instance, assessments of pathology‐related variables such as family communication deviances and negative expressed emotion have proven equally fruitful in studies of ordinary and high‐achieving elementary school children, learning disabled youths, and young adults with schizophrenia (Ditton, Green, & Singer, 1987; Green, 1995; Hagmann, 1993; Hahlweg & Goldstein, 1987; Rasku‐Puttonen, Lyytinen, Poikkeus, et al ., 1994; Ratnam, 1994; Singer et al ., 1978). Based on these findings, we think that a health/pathology neutral approach does not require family researchers to select only measures that bear an uncertain relationship to psychopathology.…”

The Impact of Adults' Communication Clarity Versus Communication Deviance on Adolescents with Learning Disabilities

“…Furthermore, this association has been shown to hold across ages, social classes, cultures, races, and different languages (Hagmann, 1994;Rasku-Puttonen et al, 1994). This relationship may be useful in predicting the impact of both high and low CC on children's cognitive and abstractthinking performance.…”