A comparison of pragmatic abilities of children who are deaf or hard of hearing and their hearing peers.

Pragmatic skills are the key to a satisfying and sustained conversation. Such conversation is critical for the development of meaningful friendships. Previous studies have investigated the conversational skills of deaf children while interacting with adults or when interacting with peers in structured referential tasks. There are few published studies that have compared the pragmatic skills of children who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) in free conversation with their hearing peers. In this study, the conversational skills of 31 children who are D/HH when interacting with a hearing friend were compared with those of 31 pairs of hearing children. Findings suggest that school-aged children (Years 3-6 of study; aged 8-12 years) who are D/HH have a wide range of pragmatic skills that they use effectively when conversing with their hearing peers. Specifically, these children asked more questions, made more personal comments, initiated more topics, and took longer turns in their conversations with a hearing friend. In contrast, the conversations between hearing peers were very balanced with similar topic initiation, length of turn, numbers of questions, personal comments, and minimal answers. These findings will help teachers to provide support for both pragmatic and social skills in children who are D/HH.

The conversational skills of school-aged children with cochlear implants.

UNLABELLED: Children with cochlear implants have been shown to have language skills on a par with children with severe hearing losses who have hearing aids. Earlier implants, bilateral implantation, and focused intervention programmes may result in some children with cochlear implants displaying similar language skills to their hearing peers. The development of pragmatic skills is central to communication competence and underpins the development of friendships. Although some studies of pragmatic skills in children with cochlear implants have been reported, most have used a contrived referential communication task rather than free conversation. METHOD: This study investigated the conversational skills of 20 children with cochlear implants, aged between 9 and 12 years, in free conversation with their hearing peers. The pragmatic skills of these 20 deaf/hearing pairs or dyads were compared with the pragmatic skills of 20 hearing/hearing dyads. Pragmatic skills were analysed in terms of conversational balance, conversational turn types, and conversational maintenance. The impact of the participants' level of speech intelligibility was also investigated. RESULTS: Children with cochlear implants tend to dominate conversations with their hearing peers. They initiated more topics, took longer turns, asked more questions, and tended to make more personal comments while their hearing friends tended to use more conversational devices and minimal answers. In contrast, pairs of matched hearing children were very balanced in all of these aspects of conversation. Speech intelligibility did not appear to impact consistently on the pragmatic skills of the children with cochlear implants but all children had a relatively high level of speech intelligibility. DISCUSSION: Rather than being characterized by frequent conversational breakdown as in older studies, children with cochlear implants had a strong grasp of basic conversational rules. They conversed in a similar way to some deaf adults who also have been shown to take control of the conversation. Findings are discussed for their implications for intervention and future research.

The communication skills used by deaf children and their hearing peers in a question-and-answer game context.

Communication is frequently characterized by a sequence of questions and answers. Little is known about how well students who are deaf or hard of hearing (deaf/HH) understand their hearing classmates in the context of an inclusive setting. This study explored the communication skills used by deaf/HH children when asking and answering questions in a "trivia" game with their hearing peers. Thirty-four children with normal hearing and 34 children with a hearing loss ranging from mild to profound (>90 dB HL) participated in this study. Each of the 34 dyads included 1 child with normal hearing and 1 child with hearing loss, matched by gender and grade level at school. Dyads were videotaped and analyzed. Pairs were compared in terms of their capacity to repeat the question, strategies used to seek information, and accuracy of responses. Results showed that the group of hearing children was able to repeat more questions verbatim compared to the deaf/HH children. The deaf/HH group required a significantly greater number of repetitions, sought a greater number of general clarifications, and correctly answered more questions compared with the group of hearing children. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of peer communication and pragmatic skill development.