Social Support, Motivation, Language, and Interaction: A Longitudinal Study of Mothers and Deaf Infants

• Published in: American annals of the deaf (Washington, D.C. 1886) D.C. 1886), 1993-03, Vol.138 (1), p.19-25
• Main Authors: MacTurk, Robert H., Meadow-Orlans, Kathryn P., Koester, Lynne Sanford, Spencer, Patricia E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Auditory perception; Babies; Biological and medical sciences; Child development; Communication; Deafness; Dyadics; Early Experience; Facial Expression; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Handicap; Hearing; Hearing Disorders; Humans; Infant; Infants; Interaction; Language; Language Acquisition; Language Disorders; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Mastery motivation; Maternal Behavior; Mother-Child Relations; Mothers; Motivation; Motivation research; Parent Child Relationship; Parents; Parents & parenting; Psychology and medicine; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social Development; Social factors; Social interaction; Social Support; Social Support Groups; Stress; Visual fixation; Young Children
• ISSN: 0002-726X; 1543-0375; 1543-0375
• DOI: 10.1353/aad.2012.0575

This project examined the effect of early cognitive, social, and communicative experiences on later social and language development in deaf infants with hearing mothers. Interactions between mothers and deaf infants were found to be positively influenced by social support provided to mothers in the early months of the infants' lives, mothers' visual and tactile responsiveness when their infants were 9 months of age, infants' ability to cope with interactive stress at 9 months of age, and fewer attempts by infants to engage with the social environment during the mastery motivation assessment at 9 months of age. Neither mother-infant affective matching nor maternal visual-tactile responsiveness correlated with the deaf infants' language level.