APA: Koester, Lynne S., Brooks, Lisa & Traci, Meg A. (2000). Tactile Contact by Deaf and Hearing Mothers During Face-to-Face Interactions With Their Infants. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, vol. 5 no. 2, 127-139.

Research Design and Description: This article was part of a larger longitudinal study conducted by Meadow-Orlans, Koester, & Spencer, 1993. Participants in this study were put into 4 groups: deaf infant/deaf parent, deaf infant/hearing parent, hearing infant/deaf parent, hearing infant/hearing parent. Dyads were infants/mothers from primarily middle-class, Caucasian families, with both parents present in the home. The average age of parents was between 30.3 years and 34.6 years. All deaf infants were diagnosed prior to age 6 months. Researchers wanted to see if infants for whom one sensory channel is deficient, as with deaf infants, would particularly responsive to additional stimulation in other modalities such as that of touch.

Hypothesis: Increased tactile contact by mothers will have a positive effect on infants, both hearing and deaf.

Did it work? Was the research convincing? The number look good except for the interrater reliability. The other data includes ANOVA’s across groups and for both age groups (6-months and 9-months) across the longitudinal study.

Key pieces to this piece of work: At 6 months--- Results show no significant differences by group in the frequency of contact. Qualitative variations did exist by types of contact: intensity, location of touch, and average duration. There was also no significant group differences in intensity of touch , location of touch or duration.

Mother’s with active touch and the infant’s body was moving occurred most frequently with deaf mother groups. In the groups were infant and mother had the same hearing status increased their use of tactile contacts. In groups where the hearing status was opposite, a decrease of reliance on tactile contact was observed.

Deaf mothers used more tactile contact with either side of infants than hearing mothers. And, deaf mothers relied more on short duration touches.

Results were also available for 9-months of age and comparisons were made between the age groups.

Veracity (accuracy) of the data: It is interesting that “the most important findings” are in the comparisons on matched dyads as opposed to mismatched dyads. See page 136, paragraph 2 for more details.

Resulting Questions and Insights:

  • I was not impressed with the interrater reliability statistics: 84.7% agreement for type of contact, 97.8% for location, and 77% for intensity of touch. Shouldn’t these numbers all be at 85% and above for confidence in the results?
  • I wonder, in the clinical setting if mothers really did behave as they did normally at home. I think that should always be questioned. How often does the mother really communicate sitting in a chair with the child strapped in a seat?
  • I would use this information to help hearing parents see the connection between using their voices and touch to help their children.
  • It is almost like code switching for mothers. Voice and touch can work together and separately to help children feel secure.