Initiation, joint attention, and language in mother-child interaction with toddlers who are deaf

This study explored mother-child interactions in 2-year-old deaf toddlers with deaf parents, deaf toddlers with hearing parents, and hearing toddlers with hearing parents. Fifteen dyads (five per group) were videotaped in spontaneous free play and during tasks designed to elicit symbol-infused joint attention, a type of interaction that involves symbolic gestures and/or language regarding a shared topic. Group differences in responsiveness/directiveness, time in symbol-infused joint attention, number of sustained interactions, and language of the toddler were examined. In addition, the relationship between time spent in symbol-infused joint attention and language was investigated as well as the relationship between responsiveness/directiveness, number of sustained interactions, and language.; Results showed that dyads with hearing parents displayed similar patterns in terms of responsiveness/directiveness and spent similar amounts of time in symbol-infused joint attention regardless of the hearing status of the child. The deaf toddlers with hearing mothers, however, produced significantly fewer different words during the interactions and spent less time in sustained interactions when compared to the hearing toddlers with hearing mothers.; Results also showed that deaf toddlers with deaf mothers spent significantly less time in symbol-infused joint attention. This difference may be due to the deaf toddler's need to divide visual attention between looking at objects and attending to their mother's language. Also, results showed a trend that the deaf mothers were more responsive to their toddlers' focus of attention than hearing mothers with deaf toddlers. This maternal responsivity was significantly related to the frequency of sustained interactions. Time spent in symbol-infused joint attention was not related to language development, however, it may be that the quality of symbol-infused joint attention, such as the richness of the language used in joint attention episodes, plays a more important role.