The effect of mothers' communication mode on language development in preschool deaf children

Abstract

Abstract A longitudinal study was conducted of the effect of mothers' communication mode on the language development of 149 children with severe and profound hearing losses. The relationship of several subject and family characteristics to mode selection was also investigated. The children were between 3 and 5 years of age at the commencement of the 4-year study. Mothers' mode was coded from videotapes of structured and semistructured interactions. Findings indicated that children whose mothers used oral communication had higher scores on measures of spoken language, whereas children whose mothers used manual communication had higher scores on measures of receptive language and mother-child communication. Within the oral group, children whose mothers made extensive use of gestures had lower scores than children whose mothers did not. Within the manual group, children receiving limited sign input had lower scores on most measures than children receiving extensive input.