Thirty-three deaf and 33 hearing children were videotaped playing with their hearing mothers at 22 months and 3 years of age. The deaf and hearing dyads differed at 22 months only on communicative competence. In addition, interactions in deaf dyads were mother dominated and less harmonious than in hearing dyads. At 3 years, the deaf children also…

This paper presents examples of nonconscious or intuitive parental behaviors in parent-infant dyads in which the parent or child is deaf, discusses these behaviors in terms of the ways they help infants adapt to the postnatal environment and transition from preverbal to verbal development, and examines difficulties in parent-infant interactions.…

Explores the effect of variations in caregiver sensitivity on the timing of their severely and profoundly deaf infants' acquisition of communication skills. Found that caregivers of deaf infants showed considerable variation in comparison to the caregivers of normally hearing infants. Contextual factors of a dynamic nature operate with varying…