Offers hearing parents of deaf infants guidelines on communicating with their child based on changes that deaf mothers make in their signing when talking to their deaf baby. Guidelines focus on restricting language, sign repetition, dramatic expression, waiting for the child's attention, tapping to gain attention, and visual leading. (DB)

A longitudinal study of the effect of mothers' communication modes on the language development of children (N=149) with severe or profound hearing loss indicated that children whose mothers used oral communication had higher scores on measures of spoken language, whereas children whose mothers used manual communication had higher scores on…

The feedback model of maternal language indicates that maternal language development is tailored to child feedback. The conversational model indicates that adjustment in mothers' speech occurs before the onset of child language. In order to verify the validity of these models, the language of mothers of six hearing and six deaf 13- to…