Title: Affectionate Touching and Intentional Communication in 9, 12, and 18 Month-Old Deaf Infants with Deaf and Hearing Mothers
1Affectionate Touching and Intentional
Communication in 9, 12, and 18 Month-Old Deaf
Infants with Deaf and Hearing Mothers
- Introduction
- Deaf mothers use more touching to communicate in
general than hearing mothers (Mohay, 2000). - Parent-Infant Dyads with a mismatched
communication system (i.e., deaf parents with
hearing children and hearing parents with deaf
children) tend to have difficulty interacting
effectively (Mohay, 2000). - In the current study, we were interested in how
parents use affectionate touch and intentional
communication with infants. - Scores on the Infant-Caregiver Interaction Scale
(ICIS) for Intentional Communication and
Affectionate Touching were compared. - It was predicted that Deaf mothers with Deaf
infants (Dd) would score higher than Hearing
mothers with Deaf infants (Hd) on both measures
with their infants.
- Abstract
- Researchers know that deaf mothers use more
touching to communicate in general than hearing
mothers (Mohay, 2000). In the current study, we
were interested in how parents engage in
affectionate touching and intentional
communication with their infants. Video tapes
were analyzed for 30 mother-infant dyads from an
archival data set, using two dimensions from the
Infant-Caregiver Interaction Scale (Munson
Odom, 1995). Deaf mothers were rated slightly
higher on average than Hearing mothers on
affectionate touching and intentional
communication when interacting with their infants
at 9, 12, 18 mos. These interaction patterns
are important to identify and understand in order
to better help mismatched dyads communicate more
effectively.
Discussion Overall, Dd dyads did appear to use
affective touching and intentional communication
more than Hd dyads at all ages. These findings
were consistent with Mohay (2000). These types
of interaction patterns are important to identify
and understand in order to help mismatched dyads
communicate more effectively.
References Brazelton, T. B., Greenspan, S.
(2000). Our window to the future. Newsweek
Special Issue, 34-36. Meadow-Orlans, K. P.,
Spencer, P. E., Koester, L. S. (2004). The
world of deaf infants A longitudinal study. New
York Oxford. Mohay, H. (2000). Language in
sight Mothers strategies for making language
visually accessible to deaf children. In P. E.
Spencer, C. J. Erting, M. Marschark (Eds.), The
deaf child in the family and at school (pp.
151-166). Mahwah, NJ Lawrence Erlbaum. Munson,
L. J., Odom, S. L. (1995). Infant-Caregiver
Interaction Scale. Unpublished Manuscript,
Portland State University.
Methods Participants Video tapes were
analyzed for 30 mother-infant dyads from an
archival data set retrieved from the Gallaudet
Infancy Study (Meadow-Orlans et al., 2004). This
was a longitudinal study conducted at Gallaudet
University in Washington, D.C. Materials Infant-Ca
regiver Interaction Scale (Munson Odom, 1995).
The ICIS is an unpublished scale developed to
assess play and feeding interactions between
parents and infants. We used two dimensions from
the ICIS (Communicative Intent and Affectionate
Touching).
- Results
- (See figures 1 and 2)
- Mothers
- Deaf mothers were rated slightly higher on
average than Hearing mothers on
affectionate touching and intentional
communication at each age. - Mothers communicated more than infants over all
the ages. - The Deaf mothers used equal amounts of touching
at all ages. - Hearing mothers communicated more than infants at
each age. - Infants
- The Deaf infants attempted to communicate with
their Deaf mothers more at 18 mos. than 9 12
mos. - Deaf infants at 12 mos. used more affectionate
touching than at 9 18 mos. - The Deaf infants attempted to communicate with
their Hearing mothers more at 18 mos. than at 9
12 mos. - The Deaf infants used an equal amount of touching
at all ages.
Figure 1
- Acknowledgements
- The author would like to thank the people who
allowed their experiences to be video taped.
Also, a huge thank you to Dr. Lynne Koester, Eve
Lahti-Harper, The Bridges Program, and The
University of Montana.