In this paper, I address the question of how interactions with deaf youth and their hearing interlocutors are able to unfold in economical and fluid ways despite the existence of sensory and communicative asymmetries. Bringing together ethnographic insights from two years of fieldwork in Iquitos, Peru with the microanalysis of moments of situated…

One hundred dyads of low-income, Spanish-speaking mothers and their bilingual children (age = 12-18; M = 14.12, SD = 1.89) who have language brokered for the mother (i.e., culturally or linguistically mediated between the mother and English speakers) were surveyed. Multiple goals theory posits that mothers and children who do not recognize and…

Studies of the processes by which parents encourage early numerical development in the context of parent-child interactions during routine, culturally relevant activities at home are scarce. The present study was designed to investigate spontaneous exchanges related to numeracy during parent-child interactions in reading and play activities at…

The aim of this study is to examine whether the asymmetrical pattern of communication usually found between people who use augmentative and alternative communication and their partners using natural speech was also found in the interaction between non-vocal young preschool children with cerebral palsy and their parents. Three parent-child dyads…

Maternal wait time after open- and closed-ended questions with eight Down syndrome (DS) and eight language-age (LA) matched peers was investigated. Mothers provided a longer mean wait time for LA children (2.5 seconds) than for DS children (1.8 seconds). These wait times matched well with children's usual response times. No differences for…

Families were compared at one, three, and nine months to examine the effects of active or passive exposure to the Brazelton Neonatal Behavior Assessment. Either the mother or both parents were the target of the intervention. Assessments of interaction behavior between parents and infants revealed no effects of the experimental intervention.…

The study with 18 children with Down Syndrome (DS), their mothers, and a control group replicated previous findings that mothers of DS children are more directive and identified qualitative differences in types of directives (e.g., mothers of DS children were more likely to request actions) suggesting differences in maternal interactive…

This study of 16 dyads of mothers and their children with a language age of 2-5 years found no significant differences between the interactional patterns of normal-hearing mothers and their normal-hearing children and of normal-hearing mothers and their children with mild to moderate hearing impairment. (Author/JDD)

The study investigated: (1) whether the mothers of young stuttering children differ from the mothers of young normally disfluent children in their verbal interaction patterns during free play with their children; and (2) whether disfluency in young children is related systematically to the type of speech act expressed. Four preschoolers and their…

Comparison of communication between hearing mothers and their deaf or hearing children (n=80) at child-ages 22 months and 3 years found most of the differences in communication by mothers of deaf and hearing children seemed attributable to the deaf children's linguistic delays. Results suggest that intervention efforts should focus on fostering…

Sixteen dyads comprised either of deaf toddlers and their deaf mothers or deaf toddlers and their hearing mothers were compared on the use and success of various means for establishing mutual attention for communication. Results suggested the deaf-deaf dyads experienced significantly more episodes of mutual attention because the deaf mothers were…

Fourteen mother-child dyads involving preschool children with autism and 14 matched dyads of typically developing children and mothers were observed during free play. Mothers of autistic children directed verbalizations to something within the child's focus of attention as often as other mothers. They directed verbalizations to something not…

This research examined specific communication patterns in 20 schizophrenic and other family triads, through analysis of transcripts of 15-minute interactions within a systems epistemology. Families with a son or daughter diagnosed as having schizophrenia were found to emphasize two communication patterns: communication that is nebulous, confusing,…

Thirty first-born infants were filmed in face-to-face interaction with their mothers and unfamiliar adults each month between 1 and 7 months of age. Adults interacted both playfully and unresponsively. Developmental trends, differential responsiveness to mothers and strangers, and social expectations in face-to-face interaction were explored.…

Comparison of 18 mothers and their late-talking male toddlers with 18 mothers and their typically developing male toddlers found no significant differences in degree of synchrony between mothers and children, mothers' use of social cues, play synchrony, compliance, or overall communicativeness, although the late talkers made significantly fewer…