Interactions between mothers who are hearing and infants or children with hearing loss, unlike the interactions of deaf mothers and infants with hearing loss, have been characterized as lacking mutual contingency and maternal responsiveness. In this study, we compared mothers' reactions to infant object-gazes in dyads in which both the mother and the infant are deaf, both are hearing, or the mother is hearing and the infant has hearing loss. Deaf mothers were highly responsive to infants but, unlike hearing mothers, waited to respond until infants spontaneously looked back at them. Findings are compared to other reports of interactive strategies of deaf mothers. We propose incorporating the strategies used by deaf mothers into a model of interaction to be shared with hearing parents whose infants have hearing loss.
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