What Mothers Do to Support Infant Visual Attention: Sensitivities to Age and Hearing Status

Abstract

This article presents a descriptive, longitudinal study of ma-ternal use of communicative strategies to accommodate and direct infant visual attention. The two questions that guided our research were whether maternal use of particular attention-related strategies changed as the child developed from 9 to 18 months of age and whether the mother's ability to make appropriate modifications in strategy use was dis-rupted when she was using a new mode of communication. Four groups of mother-infant dyads were included: deaf mothers with deaf children (Dd), hearing mothers with deaf children (Hd), deaf mothers with hearing children (Dh), and hearing mothers with hearing children (Hh) (n = 77). When the infants were 9, 12, and 18 months old, they were video-taped while they engaged in free play with their mothers. Us-ing a time-sampling technique, videotapes were coded to de-termine the frequency with which mothers used specific attention-related strategies. Our findings showed group differences in the attention-related strategies used by deaf and hearing mothers. These group differences were consis-tent with the hypothesis that while mothers appeared to be sensitive to and tried to accommodate their children's com-munication needs, the mothers may have been limited by their own communicative experiences. With regard to This research was done by the first author ts partial completion of her doctoral dissertation at The American University under the supervision of Dr. Patricia Spencer, Dr. Carol Weissbrod, Dr. James Gray, and Dr. Vivian Shayne, each of whom helped bring the dissertation to comple-tion. We thank Linda Stamper, Gwen Horton, and Nicole Anderson for their many hours coding videotapes for this study. We also thank The Center for Studies in Education and Human Development at Gallaudet University for supporting the collection of videotape! in this analysis. Financial support w»s provided by Grant No. HO23C10077, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, US. Department of Edu-cation, and by The Center for Studies in Education and Human Develop-ment at Gallaudet University. Correspondence should be sent to Robyn P. Waxman, 2818 Marnat Road, Baltimore, MD 21209.