Modality use in joint attention between hearing parents and deaf children.

Nicole Depowski,John Oghalai,Homer Abaya,Heather Bortfeld

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01556

Nicole Depowski, John Oghalai + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01556

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Abstract

The present study examined differences in modality use during episodes of joint attention between hearing parent-hearing child dyads and hearing parent-deaf child dyads. Hearing children were age-matched to deaf children. Dyads were video recorded in a free play session with analyses focused on uni- and multimodality use during joint attention episodes. Results revealed that adults in hearing parent-deaf child dyads spent a significantly greater proportion of time interacting with their children using multiple communicative modalities than adults in hearing parent-hearing child dyads, who tended to use the auditory modality (e.g., oral language) most often. While these findings demonstrate that hearing parents accommodate their children’s hearing status, we observed greater overall time spent in joint attention in hearing parent-hearing child dyads than hearing parent-deaf child dyads. Our results point to important avenues for future research on how parents can better accommodate their child’s hearing status through the use of multimodal communication strategies.

Highlights

Imagine a world in which the way that people communicate is inherently different from how you communicate: You use visual information and they insist on using auditory information
The results of a Mann–Whitney U analysis indicated that hearing parent-hearing child dyads spent a significantly higher proportion of time in joint attention than hearing parent-deaf child dyads, U = 15, p < 0.05
Our results highlight interesting differences in both unimodal and multimodal communication used during episodes of joint attention by parents and children in hearing–hearing and hearing-deaf dyads

Summary

Introduction

Imagine a world in which the way that people communicate is inherently different from how you communicate: You use visual information and they insist on using auditory information. For many children who are born deaf, this is the reality they initially face. This is because 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents (Mitchell and Karchmer, 2004), meaning that there is an inherent mismatch between parent and child in the dominant modality used for communication. We examine how hearing parents accommodate their deaf children’s hearing status by documenting the modality or modalities used in communication between parents and children. To what extent do parents use changes in modality to accommodate their child’s hearing loss and how do children adapt to those changes?

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Results

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