Joint attention in mother -child dyads involving deaf and hearing toddlers: Implications for socioemotional development

Ninety percent of deaf infants are born to hearing parents, and socioemotional development is compromised in a substantial subset of these children. While deafness itself does not cause socioemotional and behavioural dysfunction, its influence on socioemotional development is profuse and complex. It was proposed that early problems in mother-child joint attention would explain some of the socioemotional development that lags chronological development in deaf children with hearing mothers. Fifty six 18- to 36-month old children and their mothers were recruited to the study; n = 29 hearing mother-hearing child dyads; n = 27 hearing mother-deaf child dyads. A reconceptualized model of joint attention guided this research and joint attention was restated as a functional construct. Four questions were asked and seven hypotheses were derived from these questions. Results supported six of the seven hypotheses tested. Findings are discussed in terms of developmental relations between joint attention and early socioemotional development in hearing and deaf children. More specifically, the findings support a developmental psychopathology perspective of development that broadens the "language" argument for problems in deaf children's social development. Overall, a deliberate, rather than intuitive, model of mothering is suggested to be important in the accommodation of hearing mother-deaf child joint attention important for early socioemotional development.