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Conversational initiations and responses in kindergarten by a blind child and his sighted identical twin

University of British Columbia

The current study compares the conversational turns of identical twin boys, one of whom is blind. Previous research regarding the conversational interactions of children who are blind suggests an emergence of conversational initiation and maintenance strategies different from those of sighted children. This literature focuses on child-adult dyads; there is little information about the conversational interactions between blind children and their peers. Comparison of B's conversational skills with those of his sighted identical twin provides a unique research opportunity, as individual differences among children on such measures are so great that it is difficult to determine what differences should be attributed to the lack of vision per se. The case of comparing identical twins is as well controlled a study as is possible. The twins' conversational turns and utterances were transcribed from audio-videotapes of the twins interacting with peers in their kindergarten classroom and then coded for discourse categories relevant to initiations and responses. Discourse categories were analysed for each child at three different time periods over the year: (a) ages 4 years 11 months (4; 11) and 5;0, (b) 5;3 and 5;4, and (c) 5;6. Results indicate that although the number of interactions each twin attempted to initiate was similar, B devoted proportionally almost twice as many turns to initiation than did G. This difference seems to be related to the findings that 1) less than half of B's initiations gained a response; 2) B persisted for a greater number of turns than G after an initial bid failed, due to repeated failed attempts; and 3) B used a large proportion of nonspecific and nonroutinized attention-getting devices, as well as simply relying on the addressee's proximity in the nonverbal domain. The results are consistent with reports that blind children have difficulty initiating conversational interaction (Dunlea, 1989; Kekelis & Andersen, 1984; Mulford, 1983; Rowland, 1983). Due to the single-subject design of this study, additional research is needed to advance us further toward being able to definitively answer the question of why this difficulty occurs and perhaps offer explanations of how it may be resolved.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-01-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/3581

Audiology and Speech Sciences

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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