Faculty of Education - Theses

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Start date: 2000 × Subject: Communicative competence in children × Subject: Preschool children ×

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    Hearing-impaired and normally hearing pre-school children's comprehension and production of shifting reference
    Russell, Rebecca A ( 2000)
    This study investigated shifting reference in young hearing-impaired and normally hearing children. Shifting reference is a critical aspect of communication. Words that shift in reference are unstable in that the referent changes as the circumstances of a conversation change. However, the words do not change their meaning even when there is a change to the event, or object, or person to which the reference refers. A listener can only determine the referent through the use of shared knowledge of the previous event, or conversation or person, or by being able to take the perspective of the speaker. Shifting reference is seen as a difficult aspect of communication to acquire. This study involved three profoundly hearing-impaired children and three normally hearing children aged 5:3 to 5:8 years of age. The purpose of this study was to make an initial investigation into the comprehension and production of shifting reference in young hearing-impaired and normally hearing children in the year prior to primary school. The study also investigated the use of an intervention program that focused on exposing the children to the terms under consideration. The results from the study suggest that the hearing-impaired participants were showing a delay in their comprehension and production of shifting reference when compared with the normally hearing participants. The final assessment of the hearing-impaired participants indicated that the language intervention program had some positive effects, as there was some improvement in most of the selected targeted word categories. The data also suggested that the normally hearing children also benefited from the language intervention program as they improved in both comprehension and production, in the targeted areas where mastery had not been reached.