Prelinguistic Interactions, Child-Addressed Speech, and Nonlinguistic Interaction Strategies: A Comparison of Severely Handicapped Child-Caregiver Dyads With Cognitively-Similar Nonhandicapped Child-Caregiver Dyads
Koenig, Mareile Anne
This item is only available for download by members of the University of Illinois community. Students, faculty, and staff at the U of I may log in with your NetID and password to view the item. If you are trying to access an Illinois-restricted dissertation or thesis, you can request a copy through your library's Inter-Library Loan office or purchase a copy directly from ProQuest.
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/70674
Description
Title
Prelinguistic Interactions, Child-Addressed Speech, and Nonlinguistic Interaction Strategies: A Comparison of Severely Handicapped Child-Caregiver Dyads With Cognitively-Similar Nonhandicapped Child-Caregiver Dyads
Author(s)
Koenig, Mareile Anne
Issue Date
1982
Department of Study
Speech and Hearing Science
Discipline
Speech and Hearing Science
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Health Sciences, Speech Pathology
Psychology, Developmental
Abstract
The purpose of this investigation was to examine the features of child-caregiver interactions which are likely to influence initial semantic development and to assess whether the natural interactive experiences of prelinguistic severely handicapped children are as likely as those of cognitively-similar nonhandicapped children to promote initial language comprehension. This was done by comparing the interactions of five prelinguistic severely handicapped child-caregiver dyads with those of five cognitively-similar nonhandicapped child-caregiver dyads.
Results indicated that the severely handicapped children provided their caregivers with as many clues to the objects of their attention as the nonhandicapped children did, but that the former used prelinguistic gestures significantly less often than the latter. Further, the two groups of children received a similar amount of linguisitic stimulation, but the handicapped children's caregivers used a significantly lower proportion of utterances which referred to the objects of their children's attention. In addition, the handicapped children were less likely to hear object labels reflecting their patterns of categorizing objects, and they were more likely to hear imperative utterances which did not refer to their immediate focus of attention. Finally, the handicapped children's caregivers used certain nondirective interactions significantly less often, and certain directive interactions significantly more often than the nonhandicapped children's caregivers did.
These results suggest that the natural interactive experiences of prelinguistic severely handicapped children who are functioning at sensorimotor stage 5 are not as likely to promote the initial acquisition of language as those of cognitively-similar nonhandicapped children. Further research is needed to assess the effects of developmentally-appropriate stimulation on severely handicapped children's emerging comprehension vocabularies.
Use this login method if you
don't
have an
@illinois.edu
email address.
(Oops, I do have one)
IDEALS migrated to a new platform on June 23, 2022. If you created
your account prior to this date, you will have to reset your password
using the forgot-password link below.
