Predicting patterns of interaction between children with cerebral palsy and their mothers

Children with cerebral palsy (CP) have often been described as passive comm unicators. Their familiar conversation partners tend to direct and control interaction. Such conversation patterns may have various precursors: childr en's motor impairment, their intelligibility difficulties, and/or their lev el of cognitive development, To test the comparative influence of these fac tors, measures of motor function, speech, communication, cognitive and lang uage skills were applied in 40 children (18 males, Ba females) with CP who were aged from 2 years 8 months to 10 years. These variables were correlate d with measures relating to interaction patterns to investigate whether ind ividual features predicted communication style. In this group, poor speech intelligibility was the main predictor of restrictive communication pattern s, such as fewer child-initiated conversation exchanges, more simple child communicative acts such as yes/no answers and acknowledgements of the other partner's messages, Results support the provision of therapy to increase c hildren's intelligibility, whether spoken or augmented, such as the introdu ction of communication aids and training programmes for parents.