Pausing during interactions between deaf toddlers and their hearing mothers

Abstract

This study investigated the prosodic feature of 'pausing' during interactions between profoundly deaf toddlers and their hearing mothers. The participants in the study were 12 mother-toddler dyads comprising six normally hearing toddlers and their hearing mothers and six profoundly deaf toddlers and their hearing mothers. Child participants were matched by language stage based on Brown's stages of morphological development and were aged between 25 and 45 months. Child participants were observed interacting with their mothers during videotaped free play sessions. Language samples containing up to a maximum of 100 child utterances from each dyad were transcribed, coded and analysed. The association between the prosodic feature of pausing (using measured time intervals) and the hearing status of the dyads was investigated. Results indicated that significant differences existed between dyads having hearing toddlers and dyads having deaf toddlers with regard to the length of pause between reciprocal utterances. The findings also suggested that there was a significant relationship between the language stage of the toddler and the dyad's use of pause length. Some variations in this general finding were noted. The implications of this study in terms of educational strategies for parents, teachers and speech pathologists are discussed.

Differences in Spoken Lexical Skills: Preschool Children with Cochlear Implants and Children with Typical Hearing

“…Hearing loss also influences processing speed (Zekveld, Kramer, & Festen, 2011). Children with hearing loss tend to require longer pause lengths to process linguistic information prior to responding (Carey-Sargeant & Brown, 2003). The need for longer pause lengths seems associated with certain situations, such as that of a noisy academic environment (Towne & Anderson, 1997).…”

“…Stephenson and colleagues (2011) found that when a minimum of 5 seconds was incorporated in the length of the expectant pause while teaching students with severe disabilities, opportunities for student participation more than doubled. Expectant pauses tend to involve eye contact, notably a sustained gaze, which serves as an additional cue for turn-taking by subtly encouraging children to vocalize or complete the adult vocalization or to execute the direction (Carey-Sargeant & Brown, 2003). This type of deliberate pause is integral to infant-directed speech (Schaffer, 1996).…”

“…The phrasal intraturn pause is another type of within-speaker silence that does not elicit a vocal utterance from anyone (Carey-Sargeant & Brown, 2003). This pause reflects a natural rest in the melody of speech, typically indicating junctures and meaning or grammatical units in spoken language (Berger, 2011;Ephratt, 2008).…”

“…There is no evidence as of yet that wait-time should be of a particular duration when used with children whose auditory access to spoken language is compromised. Additionally, there is limited evidence that the length of phrasal intraturn pauses during verbal interactions between parents and children with hearing loss should be slightly longer and varied as a function of the child's language level (Carey-Sargeant & Brown, 2003). Do all young children with hearing loss benefit from longer phrasal intraturn pauses?…”

“…It is critical that practitioners develop sensitivities to the interactional relevance of self-controlled pauses, and understand how these pauses can be modified for optimal use with children and adolescents with hearing loss (Carey-Sargeant & Brown, 2003). Practitioners are encouraged to engage in critical analyses of their own communicative talk, both in classroom and clinical settings (Thornbury, 1996).…”