Advances in Cognition, Education, and Deafness

Symbolic Play Behaviors of Normally Developing Deaf Toddlers

Symbolic Play Behaviors of Normally Developing Deaf Toddlers Patricia E. Spencer David Deyo Natalie Grindstaff Children's play has long been acknowledged to be a source of information about the content and sophistication of their thoughts. Symbolic play (sometimes called "pretend" or "pretense" play) is thought to be tied especially closely to the development of other representational or semiotic functions (Piaget 1962) and, as such, to provide an index of cognitive development Or maturity (Bruner, Oliver & Greenfield 1966; Lowe 1975; McCune-Nicolich 1981; Nicolich 1977). Observations of play behaviors have been proposed to provide an alternative means of measuring the cognitive development of children with some form of language delay (Ungerer, Zelazo, Kearsley & Kurowski 1979). Thus, assessment of play behaviors could provide a helpful means of measuring the cognitive development of children with a significant hearing loss and concomitant delayed language acquisition. Use of such an assessment approach assumes , however, that neither language delay nor lack of auditory input during critical developmental periods negatively affects the level of play that a child demonstrates. Neither assumption has yet been shown to be valid. Available studies of the play behaviors of deaf children raise doubts about the quality and quantity of their play compared to that of hearing children. Darbyshire (1977) reported that deaf children engaged in less pretend ("makebelieve ") play, produced fewer episodes of play in which one object is substituted for another, and generally exhibited less "mature" play than did hearing children. Other researchers have similarly reported that the symbolic play of deaf children was deficient or delayed for age (Gregory 1985; Higginbotham & Baker 1981; Singer & Lenahan 1976). In contrast, Mann (1985) found no qualitative differences in levels of play of deaf and hearing children when the language accom216 Symbolic Play Behaviors ofNormally Developing Deaf TodclJers 217 panying their play was excised from the analysis. She found a quantitative difference between the groups, however, with deaf children engaging in symbolic play less of the available time. The source of differences between symbolic play of deaf children and hearing children has been suggested to be due to or associated with deaf children's language delay. Several authors (Casby & McCormack 1985; Pien 1985; Vygotsky 1978) have reported that deaf children with higher language skills show play behaviors beyond those of their peers w~th lower language skills. These findings suggest that, in the absence of any delay in language acquisition, deafness (i.e., the lack of auditory input) should have no negative effect on children's play behaviors. Our study addressed this possibility by comparing symbolic play of hearing children with that of deaf children whose parents are deaf and use sign language fluently. Deaf children like those in our study have been found to develop language at normal rates in the visual-manual modality (Bellugi & Klima 1975). We predicted , therefore, that no differences would be found between the symbolic play of our deaf and hearing subjects. The lack of consistent auditory input throughout the sensorimotor period would therefore fail to have any negative effect on early symbolic abilities as shown in symbolic play. METHODS AND PROCEDURES Four deaf toddlers with deaf mothers and four hearing toddlers with hearing mothers participated. The children ranged from 24 to 28 months old. All mothers had graduated from college. Deaf children had congenital hearing losses in the severe/profound to profound range and were not using amplification. Their mothers used either ASL or a form of Sign English as their primary language. Hearing children were from English-speaking homes. All children were evaluated using either the Alpern-Boll Developmental Profile II or the Bayley Scales of Mental Development and were determined to be functioning developmentally within norms for age. Twenty minutes of play between mother and child were videotaped in the family's home. Mother and child were provided with a box of toys containing most of those used by Nicolich (1977), and the mother was instructed to "play with [the child] just as you would when you have some free time during the day." The coding system was based on that of McCune-Nicolich (1980, revised 1983) and included five levels of symbolic play (Figure 1). We modified the original system in order to allow differentiation between verbal and nonverbal preplanning of play activities and to elaborate somewhat the highest subcategory of play (5.3) so that it included both logical sequencing and preplanning of the first activity in the sequence. (See Spencer, Deyo & Grindstaff, 1990, for further description of the coding system.) Before the tapes...