Conversation Initiation in Families With a Toddler Who Is Deaf or Hard of Hearing.

Purpose: The purpose of this work is to describe the conversation initiation rates in families of toddlers who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) as compared to those with typical development.

Method: Analysis of daylong acoustic recordings was used to describe the conversational dynamics in 78 families, comprising 51 families with a DHH toddler (23 boys, 28 girls) and 27 families with a typically developing (TD) toddler (16 boys, 11 girls). Number of conversational initiations was the primary variable of interest to describe conversational dynamics within families.

Results: Results of this study suggest that toddlers' conversation initiation rate does not differ by the sex or the hearing status of the child; however, mothers initiated conversations at a higher rate than fathers in both the DHH and TD groups.

Conclusions: Exploring conversation initiation provides a window into the broader development of conversational dynamics that may influence the course of language development in children, especially those with or at risk for a communication disorder. Results indicate that there was no difference in conversation initiation rate between families with DHH toddlers and families of TD toddlers, suggesting that this aspect of conversational dynamics is not influenced by pediatric hearing loss.