Early Intervention with Babies who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing

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Early Intervention with Babies who are Deaf and
Hard of Hearing

• Visual/Gestural
• Development and Games
• Susan R. Easterbrooks
• Georgia State University
• Spring, 2002

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• Visual development is equally important to the
  child who is learning to listen as it is to the
  child who is learning to sign. In reality, half
  of all children with hearing losses combine both
  modalities.
• Children with hearing losses are naturally tuned
  in to the visual world, so take advantage of it.

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Stages of Visual Development

• Deictic gazing
• Child gazes or points at something with his
  eyes
• Mutual gazing
• Shared visual attention to a stimulus
• Joint reference
• Common focus on one entity that leads to a sign
• Facial expression
• Before 2, communicates affect
• After 2, conveys specific grammatical features of
  ASL
• Gestures and signs
• True sharing of a concept occurs

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General Communication Pointers

• Babies who are deaf and hard of hearing are not
  always easy to read. This requires your time
  and your observation. Language will develop more
  rapidly if you spend time with your baby.
• Pause what you are doing and figure out what the
  baby needs, then respond.
• The childs intent is not always immediately
  evident.
• Provide information to baby through multiple
  senses and multiple actions.
• Your meaning is not always immediately evident.
• Make sure child knows you value his communication
  attempts.

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• Make communication accessible.
• Make sure baby has a clear view of your face.
• Make sure there is adequate lighting on your
  face.
• Present information at the childs eye-level.
  Stoop down or squat on the floor if you have to.

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• Notice what your baby is noticing and comment
  about this, or engage him in an associated
  activity. Use the pointing gesture.
• Take your childs lead regarding concepts,
  actions, and experiences in which he is
  interested.
• Watch for body language that lets you know what
  interests him.
• Watch for behavioral changes to let you know what
  interests him.
• Even if you dont know the sign for something,
  use a natural gesture to refer to it.

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• NOTE The pointing gesture is a very important
  communicative tool in visual languages. It has
  the same purpose to the adults spoken look and
  the hearing childs spoken dat ?, or zat ?
  Until children are able to look at a referent or
  ask about a referent, their vocabularies do not
  grow rapidly.

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• Let child know what it is you are paying
  attention to.
• Move your hand or body so the baby can see your
  communication while still looking at a toy or
  activity.
• Move toy or other object in front of baby then up
  toward your face to capture his attention to your
  communication attempts.
• Tap on an object before you say/sign something
  about it to let him know you are communicating
  about the object.
• Tap on baby then sing or say, Look at me.
• Pause and give child time to look up at you. Tap
  again if he does not respond the first time.

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• Keep your communications just above the childs
  level (Bellugi) while you continue tapping,
  pointing to, or showing the referent.
• Start with imitating babbling.
• Move to single words/signs.
• Move to 2-word/sign, then 3-word/signed
  utterances.
• Move to simple, short sentences that are
  grammatically accurate in English or ASL.
• Repeat the utterance.
• Sandwich sign/say, draw attention, sign/say.
• If you are using signs, fingerspell as well.
• Dont overwhelm with messages.

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Mabbling(Marschark, 1997. Raising and educating
a deaf child A comprehensive guide to choices,
controversies, and decisions faced by parents and
educators. New York Oxford University Press.)

• Manual babbling
• Deaf parents respond to manual babbles in the
  same way as hearing parents respond to spoken
  babbles.
• Mabbling changes into meaningful signed
  communication in the same way that babbling
  changes into meaningful spoken communication.
• Pre-canonical
• Canonical
• Jargon

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• Be rhythmic (include your body)
• horsie, horsie (cradle child in crook of arm and
  bounce left and right while signing)
• all gone (dramatic face, sweeping sign)
• Be repetitive
• say/sign repeatedly
• Imitate the child
• mimic childs mabble
• Interpret the mabble
• sandwich Mabble-point/tap interpret-mabble
• expand the mabble

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Visual-Gestural Games

• Visual-gestural games are interactions that
  focus on the visual exchange of communication.
  Their purpose is to make connections between
  objects and their labels.

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• Play facial gesture and body language games.
  These are another form of mabbling.
• Facial expression and body language are
  grammatical elements in ASL. What begins as a
  silly face or an unusual gesture may evolve
  into a recognized component of visual grammar.

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Peek-A-Boo

• Includes all three modalities
• Visual- parent and child are engaged in active
  eye contact.
• Auditory- saying peek-a-boo when uncovering
  eyes.
• Kinesthetic- the physical movement of
  covering and uncovering the eyes.

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Where is it?

• Encourages joint attending, pointing, and the
  questioning gesture.
• Partially cover toy with blanket.
  Point/gesture/say/sign Where is it? Remove
  blanket and point/gesture/say/sign There it is!
  Theres the label item.

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The Mirror

• Look into the mirror with the infant and label
  the child with his or her name sign, and the
  mother with the sign MOTHER. This could also be
  done with the parts of the face or body.

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To summarize

• Take time to communicate.
• Make sure your message is comprehensible and
  accessible.
• Encourage attending as well as communicating.