Interacting With Infants With a Hearing Loss

Abstract

Interactions between mothers who are hearing and infants or children with hearing loss, unlike the interactions of deaf mothers and infants with hearing loss, have been characterized as lacking mutual contingency and maternal responsiveness. In this study, we compared mothers' reactions to infant object-gazes in dyads in which both the mother and the infant are deaf, both are hearing, or the mother is hearing and the infant has hearing loss. Deaf mothers were highly responsive to infants but, unlike hearing mothers, waited to respond until infants spontaneously looked back at them. Findings are compared to other reports of interactive strategies of deaf mothers. We propose incorporating the strategies used by deaf mothers into a model of interaction to be shared with hearing parents whose infants have hearing loss.

Parental Use of Multimodal Cues in the Initiation of Joint Attention as a Function of Child Hearing Status

“…Particularly in cases where there is little to no sign language used in a hearing-status mismatched parent-child dyad, as is often the case with children who are candidates for cochlear implantation, the establishment of joint attention can serve as an important scaffold for children to learn about communicative intent, as is the case for children in hearing-status matched dyads. Thus far, researchers have focused on hearing-mismatched parent-child dyads to identify strategies used by parents to engage children's attention (Gale & Schick, 2009;Lieberman et al, 2014), characterize parents' adaptive social behaviors (Nowakowski et al, 2009), and compare overall amounts of joint attention across dyad types (i.e., hearing parent-deaf child, hearing parent-hearing child, and deaf parent-deaf child) (Nowakowski et al, 2009;Spencer, 2004;Spencer et al, 1992). Although these studies generally include small sample sizes and children with highly heterogeneous hearing issues, their findings show that while hearing parents are sensitive to deaf children's communicative efforts, the overall rate of maternally initiated joint attention is lower in hearing status-mismatched dyads.…”

Quantity and Quality of Caregivers’ Linguistic Input to 18-Month and 3-Year-Old Children Who Are Hard of Hearing

“…In part, this is because most research on caregiver input to children with HL has focused on dyads in which the child is deaf, as opposed to hard of hearing. Findings generally indicate that hearing parents are more directive, use less complex language structures, and less high-quality talk, including mental state talk, in interactions with their deaf children than parents who share the same hearing status as their child (Cross et al 1980; Nienhuys et al 1984; Nienhuys et al 1985, Spencer et al 1992; Moeller & Schick 2006; Morgan et al 2014). There is some evidence, however, that differences are less apparent or non-existent when the control group is language-matched to the child with HL, as opposed to age-matched, thus indicating that children’s language abilities influence quality of caregiver input (Gallaway & Woll, 1994).…”

Hören und Kognition im Kindesalter

“…This is crucial for early learning and child development. (However, with reduced sustained attention, the hearing parent may also contribute to the problem because hearing parents do not pay enough attention to the child’s gaze direction 91 93 ). Fortunately, at later ages (around 9–10 years), this problem is no longer observed 92 .…”

“…Dies ist für das frühkindliche Lernen und die Entwicklung des Kindes von entscheidender Bedeutung. (Bei der reduzierten Dauer-Aufmerksamkeit kann aber auch der hörende Elternteil das Problem mit verursachen, da hörende Eltern nicht genug auf die Blickrichtung des Kindes achten 91 93 ). Im späteren Alter (um 9–10 Jahre) ist dieses Problem glücklicherweise nicht mehr zu beobachten 92 .…”