Mental state language and quality of conversational experience in deaf and hearing children

Abstract

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Examining conversational input and communicative interaction between hearing parents and very young children may help to identify the origins of subsequent social cognitive delays in deaf children. In the investigation reported here, we examined parental mental state language directed at young deaf and hearing children in terms of content and interactional quality of the conversational input. Any differences observed may provide insights into the importance of early mental state conversations for children's social cognitive development. We were also interested in the effects of different language and cultural environments on children's early conversational experience. We examine this, by comparing infants and toddlers from the UK and Sweden. Both countries have a strong record in early Conversational input to deaf children 6 identification of deafness and subsequent remediation services and so we will be able to evaluate development in children who experience both early and good quality intervention. Permanent repository link MethodParticipants. The Swedish sample consisted of 10 hearing infants (4 female) and 10 deaf infants (6 female), all of whom had hearing parents. The mean age of the hearing group was 23 months (range: 19 to 28 months). The deaf infants had a mean age of 23 months (range: 17 to 26 months). They were healthy and without known additional disabilities such as cerebral palsy, autism, mental retardation, or visual impairment.In the group of Swedish deaf infants, five used cochlear implants ( Woolfe, Herman, Roy, & Woll, 2010). In the deaf group, two infants had two older siblings aged 4 to 7 years. In the hearing group, three infants each had one older sibling aged 5 to 13 years. One infant in each group had a 2-month-old younger sibling. Five other infants were initially tested and excluded because they did not cooperate during the visit (1 deaf and 4 hearing children). Children's language scores were measured as extremely poor using the Reynell Developmental Language Scales (Reynell, 1977). Conversational input to deaf children 7The UK sample consisted of 20 deaf children (10 female) and 9 hearing children (5 female Of the 20 deaf children, 16 had CIs and four HAs at the time of testing. The CI children had pre-implant hearing levels in the range of 80 to >140 dB of hearing loss. The mean age of implantation was 18 months (range: 12 -29 months), and the mean time since implantation was 11 months (range: 1 -19 months). The HA children had hearing levels in the moderately to severely deaf range (between 50 and 80 dB of hearing loss). The mean age of amplification was 4 months (range: 1-10 months) and the mean time since first use of HA was 24 months (range: 12 -31 months). All deaf children had hearing parents who had minimal familiarity with British Sign Language (BSL). The children's language scores were assessed using the BSL and English MacArthur Bates CDI (Woolfe et al, 2...

Early conversational environment enables spontaneous belief attribution in deaf children

“…This issue is currently intensely debated (Heyes, 2014), and further theoretical and empirical contributions are needed before a firm conclusion can be suggested. Taken together, our findings shed new light on the conditions of the emerging spontaneous and non-verbal belief attribution skills by suggesting that these skills are fostered and learnt through conversational input from caregivers during the first two years of life Morgan et al, 2014). We have previously suggested ) that the delayed ToM among deaf children of hearing parents is best explained by ''.…”

“…In the case of deaf preschool and school age children, hearing parents' use of appropriate mental state comments may be more difficult to accomplish when the children have severe language delays and the hearing caregivers find communication with their deaf children effortful (Moeller & Schick, 2006). Hearing mothers of deaf infants and toddlers tend to use less cognitive mental state language and their conversations are characterized by less communicatively effective turn-taking (Morgan et al, 2014). Moreover, hearing parents seem to spend less time in coordinated joint attention with their deaf children than with their hearing children (Harris & Chasin, 2005) and tend to interrupt the child's attention by initiating new unrelated activities (Meadow-Orlans & Spencer, 1996).…”

“…Thus, the case of environmental influences in ToM development in deaf children is of great theoretical interest since they offer an opportunity to disentangle some of the variables thought to be of importance in this respect (Corina & Singleton, 2009). Previous studies have investigated the ways in which children's ToM development is fostered by interaction with caregivers, and have shown that deaf children's early experiences of communicative interaction with their hearing parents are very different compared to hearing children (Harris & Chasin, 2005;Meadow-Orlans & Spencer, 1996;Moeller & Schick, 2006;Morgan et al, 2014;Vaccari & Marschark, 1997). Onishi and Baillargeon (2005) designed a non-verbal looking time task to examine typically developing hearing infants' abilities to attribute a false belief to another person.…”

Teoria da mente e habilidades sociais: estudo com crianças pré-escolares

“…Considerar essa construção processual corrobora outros achados na literatura (Shahaeian, Peterson, Slaughter, & Wellman, 2011), que argumentam em favor da importância da cultura na constituição do indivíduo e no seu desenvolvimento sociocognitivo. As experiências anteriores das crianças, bem como o contexto sociocultural em que estão inseridas são apontadas em muitos estudos (Deleau, 2012;Morgan, Meristo, Mann, Hjelmquistc, Suriand, & Siegal, 2014;Panciera, 2007;Panciera & Domingues, 2013;Rodrigues, Pelisson, Silveira, Ribeiro, & Silva, 2015) como fatores importantes para o desenvolvimento de uma teoria da mente.…”

Rethinking the Relationship between Social Experience and False-Belief Understanding: A Mentalistic Account

“…Consistent with this prediction, Meristo et al (2012) found that 23-month-old deaf infants raised by hearing parents failed a non-elicited-response false-belief task, whereas hearing infants of hearing parents succeeded. Although Meristo et al (2012) did not directly examine the social experiences of these infants, recent evidence suggests that interactions between hearing mothers and their deaf infants involve significantly fewer cognitive terms (e.g., think, know ) and connected turns than do interactions between hearing mothers and hearing infants (Morgan et al, 2014). Given that these factors predict older children’s performance on elicited-response tasks (e.g., Ensor and Hughes, 2008), these findings provide suggestive, albeit indirect, evidence that differences in social experience can affect early false-belief performance.…”