RECIPROCITY, RESPONSIVENESS, AND TIMING IN INTERACTIONS BETWEEN MOTHERS AND DEAF AND HEARING CHILDREN

The Greenspan-Lieberman Observational System-Revised (CLOS-R; Greenspa n & Lieberman, 1980) was used to describe characteristics of dyadic in teractions between hearing mothers and hearing toddlers (HH), deaf mot hers and deaf toddlers (DD), and hearing mothers and deaf toddlers (HD ). Deaf mothers produced fewer interactive behaviors than hearing moth ers, apparently in order to accommodate infants' visual attention need s. DD and HD children were more likely than hearing children to react in a manner initially indicated by GLOS-R coding to be anticontingent. Additional analysis indicated this was a misinterpretation for DD, fo r whom this reflected adaptive attentional patterns. This adaptive pat tern did not account for anticontingency among HD children. Assessment instruments require some modifications and results must be interprete d with caution when applied to dyads of deaf mothers and children.