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Parents’ verbal input directed at infants is distinguished by exaggerated acoustics and is frequently paired with informative gestural cues to highlight content of the speech. The purpose of this study was to characterize differences between use of acoustic and gestural highlighting by mothers of infants who have hearing loss and normal hearing, given the lack of reinforcing communicative feedback that infants with hearing loss are able to provide their parent. Participants included 19 normal hearing mothers and their 11-17 month old toddlers with congenital bilateral hearing loss (n = 10) or normal hearing (n = 9). Maternal utterances within a 10-minute play session were coded for the presence and type of gesture use (e.g., deictic, conventional), as well as for pitch contour (e.g., flat, rising-or-falling). No significant differences were detected between groups of mothers on either overall use of gesture or on relative distribution of types of gesture and acoustic contours used, reflecting the ability of mothers’ of children with HL to provide communicative input despite their child’s low rate of responsivity. Study funding provided by NIH: NIDCD (R03DC012639). |
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