Joint Action in Deaf and Hearing Toddlers: A Mobile Eye-Tracking Study

Infants experience the world through their actions with objects and their interactions with other people, especially their parents. Prior research has shown that school-age children with hearing loss experience poorer quality interactions with typically hearing parents, and difficulties in controlling their visual attention. In the current study, we used mobile eye-tracking to investigate parent-child interactions in toddlers with and without hearing loss. Parents and toddlers engaged in a goal-directed, interactive task that involved inserting coins into a slot and required joint coordination between the parent and the child. We examined the visual behaviors of the toddlers and the scaffolding behaviors of the parents. In contrast to previous work, preliminary findings reveal a pattern of potential similarities between deaf and hearing toddlers or their parents