Social Support, Motivation, Language, and Interaction: A Longitudinal Study of Mothers and Deaf Infants

Abstract

This project examined the effect of early cognitive, social, and communicative experiences on later social and language development in deaf infants with hearing mothers. Interactions between mothers and deaf infants were found to be positively influenced by social support provided to mothers in the early months of the infants' lives, mothers' visual and tactile responsiveness when their infants were 9 months of age, infants' ability to cope with interactive stress at 9 months of age, and fewer attempts by infants to engage with the social environment during the mastery motivation assessment at 9 months of age. Neither mother-infant affective matching nor maternal visual-tactile responsiveness correlated with the deaf infants' language level.