Interaction between children with cerebral palsy and their mothers: the effects of speech intelligibility

Children with cerebral palsy and severe speech disorders have been describe d as passive communicators, whose conversation partners control and dominat e interaction. This paper studies the effects of speech intelligibility on interaction between mothers and their children with cerebral palsy to exami ne if similar patterns of child passivity and adult domination are also obs erved in dyads in which children are physically dependent but naturally int elligible to their parents. Two groups, each of 20 children who had four-li mb cerebral palsy and who differed in their speech intelligibility, partici pated in the study. Children in Group I (whose interaction has been previou sly reported) were unintelligible to their parents out of context. Children in Group 2 had speech that was understood without situational cues. Childr en and their mothers were videotaped playing with a set of toys that had be en shown to elicit from non-disabled children a full range of the conversat ional moves and speech acts targeted in the study. Videotaped interaction w as transcribed and coded at three levels to show conversation structure, th e pragmatic functions expressed and the method of communication used. Perce ntage distribution of coding categories was compared across groups using co da. Results showed that verbally intelligible children initiated more conve rsations and used their communication for a wider range of functions than d id non-speaking children, for whom more restricted patterns of conversation were noted. Unexpectedly, few differences were observed between the two gr oups of mothers, who initiated and closed most exchanges. Implications for intervention are discussed.