Symbol-Infused Joint Attention and Language Use in Mothers With Deaf and Hearing Toddlers

Abstract

Mother-child interactions in 2-year-old deaf toddlers with deaf parents, deaf toddlers with hearing parents, and hearing toddlers with hearing parents were explored. Fifteen dyads were videotaped in free play and symbol-infused joint attention tasks. Dyads with hearing parents displayed similar responsiveness/directiveness patterns and spent similar amounts of time in symbol-infused joint attention regardless of child hearing status. Deaf toddlers with hearing mothers, however, produced significantly fewer different words and spent less time in sustained interactions than hearing toddlers. Compared with hearing mothers with deaf toddlers, deaf mothers tended to be more responsive to their toddler’s attention focus, an aspect of maternal responsiveness significantly related to the frequency of sustained interaction. Deaf toddlers with deaf mothers spent significantly less time in symbol-infused joint attention, possibly because of deaf toddlers’ need to divide visual attention between looking at objects and attending to their mother’s language.

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.…”

Assessing Parent Behaviours in Parent–Child Interactions with Deaf and Hard of Hearing Infants Aged 0–3 Years: A Systematic Review

“…Higher child language scores were related to more time in higher level engagement states with a parent (i.e., coordinated joint engagement and symbol-infused joint engagement) [ 10 ]. Deaf children spent significantly less time in these states when compared to their hearing peers and therefore used less language [ 9 , 55 ].…”

“…These authors found positive correlations between total duration of joint engagement and receptive and expressive language skills. Interestingly, Gale and Schick [ 55 ] and Dirks and Rieffe [ 20 ] found correlations between non-intrusiveness and joint engagement in mothers who followed their toddler’s interests, rather than directing, and this was also linked to more instances of joint engagement.…”

Revisiting how we operationalize joint attention

“…In these instances, dyads engage in a free-play session with an adult, uninterrupted by prompting or technology. These interactions are typically recorded and coded offline, incorporating specific criteria for characterizing different components of the interaction, including bouts of joint attention (Bakeman & Adamson, 1984;de Barbaro et al, 2016d;Gale & Schick, 2009;Nowakowski et al, 2009;Salo et al, 2018;Tomasello & Farrar, 1986). The different protocols consist of components intended to provide guidance on codable criteria, with agreement between coders assessed via interrater reliability.…”