APA: Dromi, Esther. (2003). Assessment of Prelinguistic Behaviors in Deaf Children:
Parents as Collaborators. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, vol. 8 no. 4,
367-382.
Research Design and Description: This article used a parent questionnaire as its design.
The questionnaire was designed around the direct parental observation of their deaf
children. Dromi focuses on deaf children with hearing mothers and how their
prelinguistic behaviors vary from that of hearing children. The big question is “whether
hearing mothers of deaf children can collaborate with clinicians in a prelinguistic
assessment of their own children?” Are mothers good reporters of their child’s
prelingistic progress?
The sample consisted of 43 mother-infant dyads, ages 8-49 months of age, with varied
hearing status- from moderately impaired to profoundly impaired. Children were
diagnosed varying between 6 months and 19 months or older.
Hypothesis: Mothers can be taught how to adequately report on their child’s
prelinguistic communication behaviors.
Did it work? Was the research convincing? Yes. Interjudge reliability averaged 86.3%.
Experienced teacher was into 20% of the homes and observed the children just as the
mothers were for direct 3-hour observations. “These results soundly indicate that
hearing parents of deaf children can provide reliable information on the communicative
behaviors of their children at home when they are guided by a structured questionnaire
that presents a closed set of optional responses.”
Key pieces to this piece of work:
Prior to the direct observations, mothers were taught how to report what they saw
in their child’s behavior. Mothers were to report on specific motor, gestural, vocal
and linguistic responses. Six questions were the basis for the observations, and
parents were instructed to observe their child in each area several times prior to
recording their responses to each question. Conventional sign was added as an
optional response to each question.
The scale was very simple: (1) never, (2) sometimes, (3) often.
There were well defined behavioral categories: independent behavior, crying,
collaborating with adults, pointing, gestures, vocalization, word, sign.
They used a closed list of 15 first words and 15 referential gestures (high
frequency vocabulary).
Deaf children whose parents used gestures in communication with them used
crying less than did deaf children of parents who reported that they
communicated with their children using only spoken language.
Child’s age positively correlated with Collaborating with Adults, Independent
Behaviors, and Pointing and negatively correlated with Crying.
Older children whose deafness was diagnosed later used more pointing and
other nonrepresentational communication than children whose deafness was
identified earlier. The older children use pointing because they have no better
means of interaction.
Veracity (accuracy) of the data:
Low negative correlation between Crying and Gestures.
Vocalizations were correlated with Pointing, but not with Word or Sign
production. This shows that “the pattern of prelinguistic behaviors in deaf
children does not directly mirror that model described for hearing children.”
Pointing and Collaboration with Adults correlates in prelinguistic deaf children
with less advanced communication, as it does in emergent behaviors of hearing
children
The use of gestures in deaf children is prevalent during the prelinguistic stage
and is associated with nonsymbolic and sometimes even noncommunicative
prelinguistic behaviors.
Resulting Questions and Insights:
Pg. 375- 1st column- ¶ 1- What is “three stepwise regression analyses”? Is it
were three items are compared against one another?
Pg. 375- 2nd column- ¶1- What are “dichotomic variables”? Are they variables
that are either related or they are not, cut and dry? However, if this is the
definition, why does the author give all the numbers and not just a yes of no
answer?
I like the recommendation by the author on page 279-380 regarding the used of
parent questionnaires for gathering data on deaf children.
I would use this article to show parents that they can be good observers of their
deaf child and that we are work together as collaborators in the assessment of
their own children.
This was a FABULOUS article for use with questions 2 of our research!