Assessment of Prelinguistic Behaviors in Deaf Children: Parents as Collaborators

This article begins with the rationale for a detailed assessment of prelinguistic behaviors in young deaf children. I used a Hebrew adaptation of the parent questionnaire developed by Camaioni, Caselli, Volterra, and Luchenti (1992) in Italy to collect data on a relatively large heterogeneous Israeli sample of deaf participants: 43 deaf children of hearing parents (19 girls and 24 boys) ranging in age from 8 to 49 months. Results indicated that prelinguistic behaviors in deaf infants resemble only to some extent the theoretical model of prelinguistic communication in hearing infants. Unique interrelationships emerged among pointing and early noncommunicative behaviors, yet no correlation emerged between the use of referential gestures and early words or signs. We analyzed findings with respect to the comparison of prelinguistic behavioral characteristics in hearing and deaf children and the collaboration with parents in assessing the prelinguistic behaviors of their own deaf children.