Nonverbal play interaction between hearing mothers and young deaf children.

The following preliminary study assessed the nonverbal play interactions of two hearing mothers and their profoundly hearing-impaired infants using a nonverbal coding scheme adapted from descriptors used by Fein (1979) and Bruner (1975a,b). The goal also was to describe the nonverbal components of their interactions during play relative to normally hearing mother-child dyads. More specifically, the goal was to determine if the behavioral patterns exhibited by the hearing mothers and their hearing-impaired children were consistent with patterns that have been reported for verbal components of play interactions. The nature of the behavioral patterns were in agreement with much of the previous literature on verbal and social interactions between hearing mothers and hearing-impaired children, but some notable differences were observed.