Georgia State University Series:

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Georgia State University Series

• Motherese/Fatherese
• Food For Babys Thought

Part 2, Presentation 5 July 2001
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Motherese/Fatherese

• Food for Babys Thought

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What is Motherese?

• The natural way that a parent communicates with
  a baby or young child.

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• The interactions between a mother and infant or
  child will differ depending on the hearing status
  of both the parent and the child.

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The dyads

• A hearing parent and a hearing child
• A deaf parent and a deaf child
• A hearing parent and a deaf child

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The Hearing Parent and a Hearing Child

• Hearing mothers of hearing children
• Raise the pitch of their voice.
• Exaggerate their intonation.
• Use simple language with short, repetitive words.
• Speak more slowly.

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Hearing mothers, cont

• Use parallel talk.
• Repeat what the child says.
• Pause between words.
• Use many comments or commands.

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The Deaf Parent and the Deaf Child
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Deaf mothers of deaf children

• Respond intuitively to their childs affective
  needs.
• cuddle their baby
• use touch to console or comfort the child, and
  respond to the childs needs.
• Use strategies to support the learning of a
  visual language.
• sign near an object with which the child is
  playing
• wave a hand to draw the childs attention towards
  them.

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Deaf mothers, cont

• Use exaggerated facial expressions when
  communicating with their baby.
• Communicate visually.
• they use visual motherese to facilitate language
  growth.
• Use modifications to hold and maintain attention
  span, allowing for greater time to process
  language input.
• sit and wait for their infants to look at them
  before beginning to sign
• talk about something before directing the child
  to look at it

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Deaf mothers, cont

• Modify their signs.
• use signs that are larger, slower, and have more
  exaggerated movements
• signs have strong rhythmicality with frequent
  repetitions
• Sign in a fluent, rich manner.
• communication occurs naturally and results in
  frequent interactions

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Hearing Mother/Deaf Child Dyad

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For Hearing Mothers Communication is Challenging

• Hearing mothers are unsure about communicating
  with their deaf child.
• They are extremely anxious and often continue to
  speak to the child as if it could hear.
• They use intuitive parenting based on what they
  know about hearing children.
• After age three, hearing mothers communication
  attempts tend to decrease.

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Challenges Continued

• Hearing mothers use inconsistent accommodations
  for their babys visual needs.
• Their attempts to communicate are brief and
  contain few signs.
• Although early use of natural gestures were
  limited, hearing mothers do increase their use of
  gestures as their children get older.

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Challenges Continued

• Hearing mothers tend to be more dominant in their
  interactions.
• More utterances functioned to control or to
  direct behavior.
• They appeared to be didactic and intrusive.
• They were less likely to use expansion or to give
  verbal praise.

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The Hearing Parent and the Deaf Child Habits to
change

• Hearing mothers of deaf children have a tendency
  to
• use insufficient visual accommodations for
  language to develop.

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Hearing mothers, cont

• When attempting to sign, use few facial
  expressions with their baby.
• This is one of the most crucial elements of
  visual communication.
• Use speech predominately to communicate with
  their infant regardless of the communication
  approach chosen.

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Hearing mothers, cont

• Simplify their speech and use simple patterns of
  syntax.
• Use less prosodic (sing-song) and intonational
  changes to their speech.
• Sign in a stilted, impoverished manner.
• They often make errors and experience
  communication breakdowns resulting in fewer
  interactions.
• Because the infant cannot hear the mothers
  voice, attention is most often on an object or
  event instead of what is being communicated.
• This lack of communication disrupts the childs
  development.

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Linguistic Impoverishment

• Hearing mother/deaf child dyads result in a
  linguistic mismatch between the mother and child.
• Lack of a shared communication system results in
  deficient interactions.
• Deficient interactions contribute to language
  delay.

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Learning Sign Language

• Most hearing mothers have not been taught ASL.
  When mothers begin signing they tend to use a
  signed English system, speaking and signing at
  the same time.
• They sign in a stilted, impoverished manner
  lacking the naturalness of deaf mothers.
• They often misarticulate signs and omit
  grammatical morphemes.

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• It appears that hearing adults, both parents and
  teachers, face a tremendous challenge in trying
  to unlearn habitual communication patterns and to
  replace them with patterns more appropriate to
  the visual mode.

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The American Society for Deaf Children

• http//www.deafchildren.org/ is an organization
  for parents of children who are deaf or hard of
  hearing. ASDC provides support to hearing
  parents facing the challenge of educating a deaf
  child. ASDC supports the use of sign language
  and maintains a positive view of Deaf culture.

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• You can do it!

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• The whole family must be committed to working
  together.

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Glossary of Professional Terms Frequently Used

• Affective Tone The emotional tone of the parent
  and overall mood of communication exchanges.
•  
• Auditory The sense of hearing.
•  
• Communication The active process individuals
  use to exchange information, ideas, needs and
  desires with and to one another.
•  
• Deictic Gaze The infants gaze is directed at
  objects.
•  
• Echoing Repeating what the child says.
• Entrainment Small, synchronous movements an
  infant makes in response to the adults speech at
  the phoneme, syllable, phrase, and sentence
  levels.

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Glossary, cont

• Expansion To restate what a child has said in a
  more linguistically correct way.
•  
• Expatiation Expanding on a word a child says by
  offering more information.
• Gesture Nonverbal form of communication (i.e.
  pointing).
•  
• Intonation The linguistic use of pitch.
•  
• Imitation An infant matches or repeats what an
  adult or other person does.
•  
• Joint Action Routine actions shared between the
  adult and infant.
•  
• Joint Attention/Reference When two or more
  participants share a common focus on one thing.
•  

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Glossary, cont

• Kinesthetic An awareness of ones body as it
  moves through space.  
• Labeling Attaching a name to an object.
•  
• Language A socially shared code or conventional
  system for representing concepts through the use
  of arbitrary symbols and rule-governed
  combinations of those symbols.
•  
• Linguists Specialists who work to determine the
  language rules that individual people use to
  communicate.
•  
• Motherese/Fatherese/Parentese The natural
  tendency of a parent or caregiver to modify their
  communication skills to convey meaning to a
  child.

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Glossary, cont

•  Modeling A natural strategy that takes place
  during motherese/parentese. Providing a correct
  example for the infant to imitate and follow.
• Mutual Gaze When the parent or caregiver and
  child are looking at one another.
•  
• Nonlinguistic Cues Gestures, body posture,
  facial expression, eye contact, head and body
  movement, and proxemics used while communicating.
•  
• Overarticulating Stretching out sounds in words
  to be more precise.
•  
• Parallel Talk Describing a childs actions
  while he or she is doing them.
•  
• Pitch The variation in ones vocal sound (i.e.
  low to high).
•  

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Glossary, cont

• Prosody The natural rise and fall of pitch
  during conversation.
• Proxemics The physical distance between
  communicative partners (i.e. between the adult
  and infant) used in communication.
• Rate The speed at which one uses language in
  communicating.
•  
• Recasting To phrase a sentence in various ways.
•  
• Reinforcement Anything that increases a
  behavior.
•  
• Referencing Noting the presence of a single
  object, action, or event for ones communication
  partner.
•  
• Responsitivity The adults tendency to
  recognize an infants signal and meet that signal
  with an appropriate and consistent response.
•  
•  

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Glossary, cont

• Stress The emphasis placed on speech by varying
  ones pitch or sound of voice.
•  
• Suprasegmentals Stress, rate, pause, and
  intonation used to signal attitude or emotion in
  speech.
•  
• Tactile Perception achieved through the sense
  of touch.
•  
• Turn Taking Turn taking is taught through game
  playing routines.
•  
• Visual Anything that can be seen.

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Resources

• Easterbrooks, S. R. Baker, S. (2002). Language
  Learning in Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of
  Hearing Multiple Pathways. Boston, MA. Allyn and
  Bacon in Press, Ch 2.
•  
• Owens, R, Jr. (1996.) Language Development/ an
  Introduction. 4th ed. Needham
• Heights, MA Allyn Bacon.
•  
• Snow, C. Kuhl, P. (2000). Motherese
  parentese or strategies we employ to facilitate
  language learning. Auditory Verbal Training
  Workshops- Consultants Mentoring. Online,
  pp.1- 3. Availablehttp//www.auditoryverbaltrain
  ing.com/motherese.htm.
•  
• http//rampages.onramp.net/world/bletter3.html