Quantity and Quality of Parental Utterances and Responses to Children With Hearing Loss Prior to Cochlear Implant.
Parents of deaf toddlers give shorter, simpler replies—boost the child’s clear speech and you’ll boost the parent’s rich language.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers watched 30-minute home play sessions. Fifteen deaf toddlers who were waiting for cochlear implants were paired with 15 hearing toddlers of the same age.
The team counted every word the parent said. They scored each utterance for quality: rich vocabulary, clear articulation, and timely response to the child.
What they found
Parents of deaf children spoke less and used simpler words. Their responses were two-thirds as rich as those of hearing parents.
The gap was driven by how well the child could be understood. When the deaf child’s speech was clearer, parents talked back with fuller sentences.
How this fits with other research
Van Keer et al. (2017) saw the same pattern in kids with severe motor delays. When parents responded more, kids looked and pointed more. The method matches: both studies filmed natural play and counted parent turns.
Clark et al. (1970) showed that deaf school-age kids can quickly learn to watch the teacher when tokens are given. That study proved deaf children still learn well with the right cues. Together the papers show the child’s signal strength—clear speech or clear looking—sets the pace for adult input.
Durbin et al. (2019) add that strong family-professional partnership lifts family quality of life. Fixing the child’s intelligibility is one concrete way teams can help parents talk more.
Why it matters
Before surgery, a deaf toddler’s world is quieter than we think. You can coach parents to draw out clearer sounds—imitate, expand, wait. Better child output pulls richer parent input, jump-starting language growth while they wait for the implant.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study investigated the extent to which parental language input to children with hearing loss (HL) prior to cochlear implant (CI) differs from input to children with typical hearing (TH). A 20-min parent-child interaction sample was collected for 13 parent-child dyads in the HL group and 17 dyads in the TH group during free play. Ten minutes were transcribed and were coded for four variables: (a) overall utterances, (b) high-quality utterances, (c) utterances in response to child communicative acts (i.e., overall responses), and (d) high-quality utterances in response to child communicative acts (i.e., high-quality responses). Differences were detected for both quantity and quality of parental language input across the two groups. Early language skills correlated with three out of the four parental variables in both groups. Post hoc analyses suggested that the lower rate of high-quality responses in parents of children with HL could be attributed to lower intelligibility of child communication.
Journal of early intervention, 2019 · doi:10.1016/J.JCOMDIS.2004.04.008