Social Cue Usage in Naturalistic Play: Caregivers of Hard-Of-Hearing and Normal-Hearing Children

Abstract

Learning a spoken language is influenced by a variety of environmental factors. One such factor are the social cues provided to a child by their caregiver(s), such as eye-gaze, joint attention and infant-directed touch. Previous research has found that observing these cues improves children’s word learning. But are social cues presented differently in different learning circumstances? In this study, we hypothesized that caregivers of children with hearing loss will adapt to their children’s hearing status by displaying greater use of social cues when interacting with their child in a naturalistic play setting. We compared caregivers' usage of eye contact, joint attention, and infant-directed touch during naturalistic play sessions with normal-hearing children and with hard-of-hearing children. We found no significant group differences between social cue usage (in duration or frequency) between caregivers with hard-of hearing children and caregivers with normal-hearing children. However, we observed individual differences in social cue usage among the caregivers with hard-of-hearing children, as well as potential patterns of social cue usage between the two groups. Keywords: children, hearing loss, hard-of-hearing, language learning, social cues