Parental strategies used in communication with their deaf infants

Abstract

One way of increasing caregivers’ language accessibility when interacting with a deaf child is through visual communication strategies. By using both a longitudinal and cross-sectional approach, this study will reveal which strategies deaf and hearing parents prefer and implement in their daily communication with their deaf children. First, the interactions of one deaf and two hearing mothers with their deaf children were recorded over the course of 18 months starting when their children were 6 months of age. Second, interactions of 5 mothers and 5 fathers (i.e. each two deaf and three hearing) with their deaf children (24 months old) were analysed for implicit and explicit strategy-use. It indicated gender related differences and confirmed caregivers’ tendencies to rely on strategies closely related to the modality of their mother tongue. Finally, deaf parents outperformed the hearing parents in the duration of successful interaction moments with their deaf children.

Relational Factors in Pragmatic Skill Development: Deaf and Hard of Hearing Infants and Toddlers

“…39 When caregivers are not aware of how to engage their DHH child in sustained joint attention, this can disrupt the development of early pragmatic skills. 41 Caregivers can be coached to build joint attention through strategies that account for their child's specific needs to build joint attention in DHH children.…”

“…84 Often, DHH children need explicit cues to draw their attention to communication in the environment. 35,37,41 For example, in group settings for toddlers, such as day care, establishment of visual cues for turn-taking has been shown to help DHH children attend to the speaker or signer and to help facilitate their ability to take turns. Caregivers' timing of conveying information and referencing objects is also of critical importance.…”

Rapid development of perceptual gaze control in hearing native signing Infants and children

“…Deaf parents use effective social engagement strategies, at an early age with their infants. Deaf parents are also particularly attuned to relating linguistic input to what is in the child's field of vision and are able to direct the child's focus of attention to objects that are the topic of conversation (Corina & Singleton, 2009;Harris et al, 1989;Loots, et al, 2005;Wille et al, 2019). This early exposure to signed language may provide infants with ample opportunity to optimize their attention across multiple, competing visual targets, leading to an enhanced control of gaze behavior during social interactions and language processing.…”

Communication Skills and Communicative Autonomy of Prelinguistic Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children: Application of a Video Feedback Intervention

“…The interaction of hearing parents with their deaf and hard-of-hearing children is known to be marked with more structuring and dominant interactions that are lower in sensitivity, responsiveness, and affect matching by the parent ( Meadows-Orland, 1997 ; Pipp-Siegel et al, 1998 ; Lam and Kitamura, 2010 , 2012 ), pointing toward an authoritarian parenting style ( Knutson et al, 2004 ). Hearing parents are known to have fewer successful moments of interactions with their deaf and hard-of-hearing child ( Beatrijs et al, 2019 ). Delays in communication ( Barker et al, 2009 ), language ( Moeller et al, 2007 ), and social competence ( Hoffman et al, 2014 ) in deaf and hard-of-hearing children further compound the behavioral shortcomings on the parent’s part.…”