Influence of Caregiver’s Sign Quality on Successful Interaction with a Deafblind Child

Abstract

This study aimed to analyse the quality of the signs offered by one of the communication partners of an individual with CDB and the effect of this quality on their interaction success. The research questions of the study were: ‘What is the quality of the sign input offered by the selected caregiver during communication with this client with CDB?’ and ‘How does this sign quality affect their interaction success? These questions were answered after analysing four videos of the communication between a client with CDB and her caregiver in ELAN with a newly developed codebook. The codebook was developed to assess phonological and semantic errors, discrepancies between spoken and signed utterances, and the success of the interaction between de communication partners. It was found that even though the caregiver made some phonological and semantical errors and even though there were some discrepancies in her communication, this did not strongly affect the interaction success. It was also found that the discrepancies had a more negative influence on the interaction success than the phonological and semantic errors.