Sixteen students (ages 11-17) with profound hearing impairment, assessed as having either good or poor speech intelligibility, were asked to describe pictures and to respond to a series of clarification requests. Significant differences emerged in repair strategies used by the two groups and in comparison with normal hearing peers despite similar…

This paper analyzes teacher communication with deaf students in terms of four dimensions: power, repair, pace, and linguistic complexity. Students interacting with teachers who used communicative features associated with power communicated less effectively than with teachers who exerted less power. Evidence that adults can change how they…

Dyad interactions of three kindergartners with deafness or hearing impairment were analyzed. Results suggest that subjects were less successful at initiations than nondisabled children, but the success of the initiations may depend on number of children involved, accompaniment of actions and/or gestures with spoken or signed communication, and…

Analysis of videotapes of the signed communication (mostly Signed Exact English) of five preschool children with deafness in a special class found their communications brief and focused on the here-and-now. Topics of conversation were similar to those of nondisabled children. Child-initiated utterances were longer and more semantically diverse…