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as a result, are less likely to acquire the full range ofconversational pragmatic skills.

Previous studies that have investigated aspects ofpragmatic functions in the conversations of deaf chil-dren have found many similarities with normally hear-ing children in range of communicative intent and inthe provision of feedback to conversational partners(Day, 1986; Greenberg, 1980; Mohay, 1990; Skarakis &Prutting, 1977). Limitations have been reported, how-ever, in deaf children’s use of the heuristic function andin the strategies they employ to enter conversations(Day, 1986; Pien, 1985). Other studies have investi-gated the conversational abilities of hearing-impairedchildren when they respond to requests for clarifica-tion and have reported conflicting findings (Hughes &James, 1985; Prinz & Prinz, cited in Kretschmer &Kretschmer, 1989).

The pragmatic skills that have not yet been re-searched in deaf children include their ability to re-quest clarification from their addressee, their ability torespond appropriately to such requests, and their over-all ability to employ appropriate strategies at times ofcommunication breakdown (Brinton, Fujiki, Loeb, &Winkler, 1986; Dimitracopoulu, 1990). This articleseeks to investigate the development of these skills indeaf children because, without these skills, they cannotcommunicate effectively in face-to-face interactions.

Requests for Clarification

Requests for clarification necessarily involve both thelistener and the speaker and indicate that the listener

This study investigated the ability of normally hearing stu-dents and two groups of profoundly deaf students, one usingoral and one using signed communication, to employ a seriesof pragmatic skills required for effective face-to-face interac-tion. Specifically considered were the ability of listeners torequest clarification, the ability of speakers to respond to re-quests, and the strategies speakers use at times of communi-cation breakdown. Differences were found between the twogroups suggesting that the profoundly deaf students haddifficulty consistently using appropriate, productive prag-matic behaviors in their face-to-face dyadic interactions.

To be considered a competent interpersonal communi-cator, a speaker must be able to apply a range of prag-matic skills effectively to ensure smooth face-to-facecommunication in conversation. Research has shownthat normally hearing children acquire this range ofskills within the first 8 years of life through active andconsistent involvement in meaningful conversationalinteractions (e.g., Owens, 1996; Romaine, 1984). Forprofoundly deaf children, however, although the effectsof profound hearing loss on syntactic and semantic as-pects of language development are now well described(e.g., Bench, 1992; Luetke-Stahlman & Luckner, 1991;Moores, 1987; Paul & Quigley, 1990), much less isknown about its effects on the development of prag-matic skills. Deaf children have fewer opportunities fornaturalistic, meaningful conversational interaction(Clark, 1989; Gallaway & Woll, 1994; Ling, 1989) and,

Correspondence should be sent to Dr. R. C. Jeanes, Deafness StudiesUnit, Department of Learning and Educational Development, Faculty ofEducation, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010 Australia.

�2000 Oxford University Press

Empirical Articles

The Pragmatic Skills of Profoundly Deaf Children

R. C. JeanesT. G. W. M. NienhuysF. W. RickardsThe University of Melbourne, Australia

has determined that there is a communication problembetween speaker and listener. The type of request forclarification indicates that the listener has identified acommunication difficulty and has conveyed that infor-mation to the speaker to repair communication (Lane,1987; McTear, 1985). The ability of listeners to requestclarification successfully at times of ambiguity or mis-understanding is an important feature of effective face-to-face interaction (Brinton et al., 1986; Dimitraco-poulu, 1990; Fey, Warr-Leeper, Webber, & Disher,1988; Hakes, 1980; McTear, 1985; Stone, 1988; Ward-haugh, 1985). A further indicator of listeners’ maturingcommunicative competence is their ability to makespecific rather than general requests for clarification,that is, to ask specifically about the information theyneed for clarification. Specificity in these requests alsohelps to avoid breakdown in the communication pro-cess. The most effective form of listener request forclarification informs the speaker precisely what it isthat the listener has not understood and directs thespeaker toward a response the listener believes will re-pair the conversational flow (Patterson & Kister, 1981).

Responses to Requests for Clarification

An appropriate response provides the informationneeded by the listener in an interaction, but the mostproductive response may also provide new, relevant in-formation that assists the interaction. No research hasbeen previously reported on this conversational abilityin deaf children, so the frequency of response types torequests for clarification in deaf dyads was also in-cluded in this study.

Age Effects

Research into the development of pragmatic skills innormally hearing children has consistently reportedrefinement and maturation in their use of these skillsso that adult-like patterns may emerge eventually, fromvery early childhood before the emergence of spokenlanguage to conversational maturity at around 8 to 10years of age and beyond. Early emerging skills includethose essential to smooth conversation, including turn-taking, which is demonstrable in early infancy (Trevar-then, 1974). By age 2 years, children can respond toneutral requests (Fey et al., 1988); by age 3 years, chil-

238 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 5:3 Summer 2000

dren can respond to clarification requests (Brinton etal., 1986); by 4 or 5 years of age, they begin to improveand revise their original message in response to listenerfeedback (Patterson & Kister, 1981). By 5 years of age,children begin to appraise the quality of speakers’ mes-sages (Asher, 1976); at 7 years of age, they show earlyskills at disambiguating messages (Bearison & Levey,1977). The ability to make either specific or nonspecificrequests for clarification has also been shown to de-velop with age; an early study by Alvy (1986), for ex-ample, reported that only 20% of 6-year-olds requestclarification, compared with 73% of 11-year-olds. Thespecificity of requests for clarification has also been re-ported to improve with age (McTear, 1985); Ironsmithand Whitehurst (1978) have reported, for example, thatrequests for clarification are mostly general until chil-dren reach 9 or 10 years old,and then become morespecific.

The ability to respond appropriately to requests forclarification has also been argued to develop with age,progressing from younger children’s simple repetitionof the original utterance to older children’s more com-plex elaborations in response to listeners’ expressedneeds. Owens (1996) argued that 4- to 5-year-olds tendsimply to repeat their original utterance, whereas elab-oration of some element in the utterance may occur by6 years. Speakers clearly provide additional input toclarify their utterance by the time they reach 9 yearsof age. McTear (1985) has further suggested that themanner of the child’s response provides additional in-sight into their awareness of listeners’ needs.

Because this research has been carried out withnormally hearing children showing, presumably, nor-mal spoken language development, it cannot be deter-mined whether pragmatic skills development is relatedsimply to a child’s age age or more closely to his or herlanguage and communication experience and skills de-velopment.

This study sought to investigate pragmatic skillsuse in face-to-face conversational interaction by threegroups of dyads: normally hearing, profoundly deaf us-ing oral communication mode, and profoundly deafusing Australian Signed English with dyads at 8, 11,14, and 17 years of age in each group. Because oftheir likely language and communication develop-ment differences and reduced opportunities for conver-sational interaction, we predicted that both the deaf

Apparatus

This study followed a standard referential communica-tion experimental paradigm used previously by Fish-bien and Osborne (1971), Glucksberg and Krauss(1967), Roberts and Patterson (1983), Robinson (1981),and others. That is, participants were seated oppositeeach other at a table 60 cm wide that had a barrier 17cm high that prevented either participant from seeingwhat was on the table on the other side of the barrier.

We used a series of five tasks to elicit interactivecommunication between the participant dyads. Eachtask included six trials. The five tasks were as follows:

1. Simple Shapes: black outlines of shapes thatcould be interpreted as familiar objects by speakers,and thus readily labeled for identification by listeners.

2. Complex Shapes: black outlines of shapes thatwere abstract and could not readily be labeled.

3. Multidifferences: each card depicted a figureholding an object in each hand. Each card differed ona number of variables: color of objects being held, typeof head gear, facial expression.

4. Relationships: black outlines of three commonobjects. The trials differed by the positional relation-ship among the objects.

5. Diagrams: geometric shapes, with differencesbetween cards being the combination of shapes, theircolor, the position on the card.

Procedures

Each pair of participants was asked to undertake 10tasks, with one of them as the speaker for five tasks andthe other as speaker for the matching five tasks. Theparticipants were seated at the table opposite eachother. One of the pair was designated speaker (that is,the message sender, irrespective of the mode of com-munication being used) and the other the listener (thatis, the message receiver). With the exception of the dia-grams tasks, an array of six cards was placed on thetable in front of the listener. The experimenter had aset of cards, identical to those on the table, which werehanded one at a time to the speaker. The speaker wasrequired to describe what was on the card in order forthe listener to identify the corresponding card from thearray on the table. Once the target referent had beenidentified by the listener holding it up, the array in

Pragmatic Skills of Profoundly Deaf Children 239

groups would show some different or idiosyncratic pat-terns as well as, possibly, delayed development in theirpragmatic skills when compared to same-age hearingdyads in their ability to request clarification at timesof communication breakdown; their ability to respondappropriately to such requests; and their overall abilityto employ appropriate strategies at times of communi-cation breakdown. We used separate oral and signinggroups in this study because, in the Australian cityfrom which the deaf participants were drawn, oralschool participants were mainstreamed into regularschool settings, whereas the signing deaf subjects werein segregated, special deaf school settings. Thus, incontrast to the segregated signing students, the oralsubjects were assumed to have had far more daily op-portunities for exposure to, and experience with, stan-dard, mainstream patterns of conversational inter-action. In this way, we could identify the effects ofconversational exposure and experience on the deafchildren’s pragmatic skills development. Although re-sulting sample sizes were small, age-related differencesbetween dyads were also analyzed to investigate pos-sible developmental trends in the deaf subjects as a ba-sis for future, larger studies.

Method

Participants

Sixty student participants were involved in this study.Twenty were normally hearing children (hearinggroup) while 40 were profoundly deaf children, eachhaving a hearing loss in excess of 90 dB in their betterear (averaged over 0.5, 1, and 2 KHz). Of the deaf stu-dents, 20 were attending oral educational settings (oralgroup) and 20 were attending settings in which spokenand signed English were used simultaneously (signgroup). With the exception of three deaf participantswho were from homes in which Auslan was used, allsubjects came from homes in which English was theonly language used. No participant had any identifieddisability other than hearing loss. Within each group of20 participants there were three pairs of 8-year-olds,three pairs of 11-year-olds, two pairs of 14-year-olds,and two pairs of 17-year-olds. Participants were ob-served interacting in pairs who were well known toeachother.

front of the listener was shuffled and replaced on thetable by the experimenter. The next card was thenhanded to the speaker. This procedure was followed foreach subsequent trial.

The participants were told that the two sets ofcards were identical, that the speaker was to tell thelistener about the card, and that the listener was to findthe same card and hold it up to show the speaker. Allpairs were asked by the experimenter to “see if together(emphasized) you can find the right card.” The partici-pants were not specifically instructed to ask questionsnor in any other way guided in the undertaking of thetasks.

In the diagrams tasks the experimenter had sixcards as previously described. The listener had plainwhite cards and a red and a black pen. The experi-menter handed a card to the speaker to describe so thatthe listener could reproduce the design.

Prior to formal testing, two practice sets were ad-ministered, one in which the listener was required toidentify a target referent from an array, and one inwhich the listener was required to replicate the dia-gram as described by the speaker.

The order in which the tasks were undertaken, theorder in which the trials were presented and who wasto be the speaker first, was random and arranged priorto the testing. All interactions were videotaped. For allinteractions the experimenter organized and controlledthe process of the testing. An observer was also presentat each taping session to record the listeners’ selectionson a prepared score sheet. The resulting recorded in-teractions were analyzed to determine the degree ofspecificity in requests for clarification, the types of re-sponses made to these requests, and the appropriate-ness of the responses.

Listener requests from all tasks were categorized aseither specific, general, implied, or unsolicited:

• specific request: those that indicated to the speakerwhat it is that the listener needs to know, for example,“The girl is in the middle?,” “ . . . and how long is it?,”“Two straight lines?.”

• general request: does not contain information to in-dicate what the listener needs to know, for example,“Say that again,” “Tell me again,” “Beg pardon,please.”


• implied request: when there was no direct verbal orsigned request, but an indication, through a shrug ofthe shoulders or a confused or questioning facial ex-pression, that the listener needed assistance.

• unsolicited request: when speakers interpreted thelistener staring for a long period at the referents as anindication of difficulty, and responded as if the listenerhad made a request. Requests for clarification resultfrom attempts by the listener to repair breakdown (Feyet al., 1988) and as such, are critical to the effective op-eration of face-to-face interaction (Brinton et al., 1986;Owens, 1996).

An appropriate response provides the information re-quested by the listener. A response that is categorizedas appropriate, in that it provides the information re-quested by the listener, may not necessarily be the mostproductive response. For example, a response that givesnot only the requested information but provides somenew additional relevant information would be morelikely to contribute to the furtherance of the interac-tion. For this reason, responses to requests from alltasks were considered not only in terms of appropriate-ness but also in terms of the degree to which they con-tributed to the promotion of the interaction. Responseswere therefore categorized, in addition to appropriate-ness, as follows:

• major modification: a response that answers the lis-tener’s request but also includes relevant informationnot previously provided by the speaker in that trial;

• minor modification: previously provided informa-tion repeated in a manner that indicates that thespeaker is attempting to assist the listener in compre-hending the message, for example, adding stress to averbal message to add emphasis to the important se-mantic elements, or, signing more slowly or deliber-ately to highlight relevant semantic elements;

• repetition: a simple repetition of the speaker’soriginal utterance without change to the content or anyother indication the speaker is making an overt attemptto assist the listener to comprehend the message;

• no response: when the speaker makes no attemptto respond the listener’s request; and

• confirming: a response to a listener’s closed ques-tion, for example, “Did you say right?”, “A redsquare?”. These were usually a “yes” or “no” response.

was a hearing, oral, or sign group member, and theirrelative use of specific and nonspecific requests forclarification (�2 � 90.9, 2 df, p � .001) The table showsthat oral subjects made more requests for clarificationoverall than any other group (482 requests overall), fol-lowed by the hearing group (365 requests overall), andthen the sign group (275 requests overall). Within thethree groups, specific requests were always more fre-quent than nonspecific requests, although this effectwas strongest for hearing participants, who made non-specific requests only 14% of the time, while the oraland sign groups made nonspecific requests 35% and48% of the time, respectively. When the three subjectgroups’ relative proportions of specific versus nonspe-cific requests for clarification were compared statisti-cally, the difference was significant between the signand the hearing groups, F(2, 57) � 7.01, p � .01, butnot between the hearing and oral groups or betweenthe oral and sign groups.

Appropriateness of Responses to Requestsfor Clarification

Concerning the appropriateness of participants’ re-sponses to requests for clarification, all subjects usuallyprovided appropriate responses, although hearing par-ticipants did so most often (99% [SD � 2.04] of thetime), followed by oral participants and signing partici-pants (90% [SD � 14.46] and 87% [SD � 21.06] of thetime, respectively). Even so, there was great variationbetween participants’ appropriateness of responsewithin the sign group as reflected in the relatively largestandard deviation for that group; there was less butstill considerable variation between oral participants,and very little variation between hearing participants,most of whom scored close to 100% for the appropri-ateness of their responses. Thus, the statistical differ-


Breakdown in face-to-face interaction requires that re-pair occurs if the interaction is to continue meaning-fully (Pratt & Nesdale, 1984; Smith & Tager-Flusberg,1982). Each time there was a breakdown in communi-cation (the listener failed to select the target referent),the speaker’s response was classified into one of the fol-lowing categories: (1) provision of new relevant informa-tion: a response in which the speaker provides somenew and relevant information; (2) repetition: a repeti-tion of the original utterance with no evidence that thespeaker is attempting to assist the listener in order torepair the breakdown; or (3) negative statement only:such as “no,” “wrong,” or “bad luck,” with no addi-tional message. Responses that included a negativestatement followed by new information, or a repetitionof the speaker’s original utterance, were no included inthis category.

Transcription and Coding

The video records of the normally hearing participantswere transcribed verbatim. For both groups of deafparticipants, a recording sheet was designed to recordall that was said, signed, gestured, and fingerspelled, aswell as noting facial expression and head movement.This was done by R. C. Jeanes, who is normally hear-ing and has over 30 years of experience as a teacher ofdeaf children and is an acknowledged expert in signedEnglish (Jeanes & Reynolds, 1982). For further confi-dence, coding of interactions of the signing dyads waschecked by a second teacher of the deaf with 25 yearsof experience teaching in Australian Signed English.Even so, because of the highly focused and predictabledyadic interactions provoked by the stimulus cards,speakers’ messages were never ambiguous to thecoders.

Results

Requests for Clarification

For each of the three participant groups, Table 1 showsthe overall number of such requests made by eachgroup, as well as the number and percentage of specificand nonspecific requests for clarification. There was avery strong relationship between whether a participant

Table 1 Number (and %) of specific and nonspecificrequests for clarification made by hearing, oral, and signinggroups

Specific requests Nonspecific requestsGroup (%) (%) Total

Hearing 314 (86) 51 (14) 365Oral 313 (65) 169 (35) 482Signing 143 (52) 132 (48) 275

ence between the hearing and sign groups in this re-gard was significant, F(2, 57)� 3.65, p � .03, whilethat between the hearing and the oral groups and be-tween the oral and the sign groups was not.

Types of Appropriate Response

The distribution of frequencies of response types thatparticipants made to requests for clarification is shownhistogrammatically in Figure 1 for each of the threeparticipant groups. These data could not be analyzedstatistically due to the small or zero frequencies insome categories. Nevertheless, the figure shows that,for the hearing group, major modifications were thepredominant response type (49%) followed by con-firming responses (38%). For the oral group, confirm-ing responses were the most frequent (38%) followedby major modifications (30%). The sign group, in con-trast, usually responded with simple repetitions oftheir original utterances (32%), followed by majormodifications (28%) and confirming responses (20%).Hearing participants never provided no response to re-quests for clarification, whereas oral participants rarelydid so (1%) and sign participants ignored 4% of re-quests for clarification.

Age Effects

Finally, the possible effects of participant age were con-sidered, first on the types of request for clarificationthat speakers used and then on the response types tosuch requests. Due to small frequencies in some cate-


gories when data were divided into age groupings, onlytrends from histograms are reported.

Types of request for clarification and age. Figure 2(a)-(d)shows that specific requests for clarification clearlypredominated in all four age groups of hearing partici-pants with the use of general, implied, and unsolicitedrequests for clarification reducing almost to zero by thetime hearing participants reached 17 years of age. Oralparticipants also preferred specific requests at all fourages, but this seemed to peak by 14 and 17 years,roughly to the levels seen in 8- and 11-year-old hearingparticipants; that is, with increasing age, oral partici-pants used fewer general and implied requests for clari-fication than those in the hearing group, but they vol-unteered more unsolicited requests for clarificationthan the hearing group. The changing pattern of re-quest types with increasing age in the sign groupseemed to be quite different. At 8 years of age, in con-trast to both the hearing and oral groups, the signgroup made far more general requests for clarificationand the predominance of specific requests did notemerge in this group until 11 years of age and later.Even then, the sign groups maintained their use of gen-eral requests beyond the frequencies of these seen inthe other two groups at 14 and 17 years. In contrast, by14 and certainly 17 years of age, the oral and hearinggroups both seemed to have established a clear prefer-ence for specific requests for clarification.

Appropriateness of responses to requests for clarification byage. Figure 3 shows mean percentages of appropriateresponses to requests for clarification for each group at8, 11, 14, and 17 years of age. At each age, the hearinggroup provided a mean of more than 90% appropriateresponses. At 8 years, neither the oral nor sign groupsprovided as many appropriate responses as their hear-ing group peers (82% and 86%, respectively), althoughwith increasing age and, presumably, improving inter-actional skills and conversational maturity, thesegroups seemed to offer appropriate responses as a ratecloser to that seen in their hearing peers.

Response types to requests for clarification by age. Figure4(a)–(d) shows frequency histograms for responsetypes made to requests for clarification by each partici-

Figure 1 Types of responses.

parts, although they now relied more heavily on con-firming responses (39%), repetitions (7%) and minormodifications (5%) than their hearing peers. At 11years of age and beyond, the oral participants neverprovided no response to a request for clarification, incommon with their hearing counterparts.

The pattern for the sign groups seemed quitedifferent from those for the other two groups in sig-nificant ways. Eight-year-old sign participants reliedeven more heavily than their oral counterparts onsimple repetitions (43%), while they showed the samelow frequency of major modifications (17%), slightlymore minor modifications (7%), more no responses(8%), and considerably fewer confirming responses(5%). The 11-year-old sign group showed a shift thatstarted to resemble the younger hearing group in thatfrequency of major modifications rose (to 49%), simplerepetitions fell (to 10%) as did minor modifications (to


pant group at each of the four ages. From 8 to 17 yearsof age, the hearing group appeared to show an initialchange and then a stabilization in the distribution oftheir response types. That is, at 8 years, major modifi-cations were already most frequent for hearing partici-pants (55%), followed by repetitions (27%) and con-firming responses (13%). Through 11, 14, and 17 yearsof age, major modifications tended to drop to around40%–45%, repetitions were used considerably less fre-quently than at 8 years, and there was a concomitantrise in frequencies of confirming responses so thatthese were used almost as often as major modificationsby 11 and 17 years of age. In contrast, the 8-year-oldoral group preferred to use repetitions (36%), followedby confirming responses (17%), major modifications(17%), minor modifications (5%), and no response(2%). The 11-year-old oral group used more majormodifications (27%) than their 8-year-old counter-

Figure 2(a) Types of requests for clarification at age 8.

Figure 2(c) Types of requests for clarification at age 14.

Figure 2(b) Types of requests for clarification at age 11.

Figure 2(d) Types of requests for clarification at age 17.

4%), and there was a greater reliance on confirmingresponses (to 12%). This pattern seemed to be stablefor the 14- and 17-year-old signing group, although thepredominance of major modifications did not appear inthe 14-year-old sign group, and both 14- and 17-year-old sign groups persisted with strong reliance on repe-titions (29%) that was not seen in their hearing or oralage peers. The emergence of confirming responses asan interactional strategy that was seen in 8- to 17-year-old hearing and oral groups was also seen by 11 yearsof age and beyond in the sign groups, but this did notyet reach the full strength in the sign group at 17 years(15%) as it did in their hearing and oral age peers (55%and 47%, respectively).

Discussion

This study revealed a number of notable differences inthe use of specific pragmatic communication behaviorsby normally hearing and by profoundly deaf students,both oral and signing.

First, the significantly greater use by oral dyads ofrequests for clarification suggested that these dyadsrecognized communication breakdowns and sought torepair them with clarification requests more often thantheir hearing or signing counterparts. It may be thatthis was a positively adaptive strategy for the deaf, oraldyads whose auditory communications are less precise,likely leading to more interactional occasions when re-quests for clarification are required. It is not clear fromthese data, however, whether the signing groups whomade far fewer requests for clarification did not experi-


ence or recognize as many occasions of ambiguity ormisunderstanding in their interactions, or whetherthey simply responded to them less effectively whenthey did occur by not requesting clarification as thehearing group tended to do. If so, the signing partici-pants may have been using a strategy that was not help-ful to their effective dyadic interaction. Further re-search needs to investigate this because a number ofauthors have suggested that the ability to request clari-fication is a fundamental skill in effective face-to-faceinteraction, at least in normally hearing children (Brin-ton et al., 1986; Dimitracopoulu, 1990; Fey et al., 1988;Hakes, 1980; McTear, 1985; Stone, 1988; Wardhaugh,1985).

A further indication of the communicative compe-tence of dyad members is their ability to make specificrather than nonspecific requests for clarification attimes of communication breakdown (Ironsmith &Whitehurst, 1978). The considerably greater percent-age of specific requests for clarification made by thehearing group (86%) when compared to the oral (65%)and the signing group (52%) suggested more maturecommunicative competence in the hearing group over-all. That is, it seemed that, although they were main-streamed in normally-hearing school settings, the oralparticipants had not yet learned the power of specific re-quests for clarification in remediating communicationbreakdown. The signing groups used specific requestseven less frequently, although it is not clear whetherthis difference represents a delay in these students’skills development in communication breakdown re-pair, or whether this is a standard but differentiatingfeature of normal signed language interactions ratherthan normal oral interactions. A future study could ex-amine this issue by comparing the interaction patternsof the signing student dyads with those of adult, fullymature sign language users.

Second, we found that each of the three groups ofspeakers across all age groups provided a high percent-age of appropriate responses overall to their listeners’requests for clarification. The appropriateness of re-sponses to clarification requests directly influences theoverall effectiveness of face-to-face interactions. Thefinding of 99% appropriate response rate in the hear-ing group across all ages is consistent with previousstudies of young hearing subjects (Hoy, 1975), while

Figure 3 Appropriateness of responses (by age).

able, adaptive strategy in that regular requests for rep-etitions and confirming responses may well assist aninteractant whose oral communication reception is im-perfect, when compared to normally hearing peers.Apparently, however, the signing participants were lessresponsive to the dyad’s communication needs, moreoften using the less efficacious strategy of simply re-peating their original, misunderstood utterance, astrategy rarely used by their hearing and oral coun-terparts. They also used major modifications lessfrequently and ignored their partners’ requests forclarification more often than their oral or hearingcounterparts, suggesting that they had not yet devel-oped effective interactional strategies for repairingcommunication breakdown, even when their partnerrequested it. Thus, the signing participants showed ev-idence of immaturity in their skills in maintainingsmooth face-to-face conversational interaction, as sug-gested by Karabenick and Miller (1977).


this study also found high, although slightly lower, fre-quencies of appropriate responses in both deaf groups(90% and 87% appropriate for the oral and signinggroups, respectively).

In effective face-to-face interaction, speakers mustprovide responses that are not only appropriate in con-tent but also productive in furthering the interaction.Major modifications assist the listener’s understandingand are likely to lead to positive interaction outcomes;these were used most often by the hearing groups, sup-porting findings previously reported by Owens (1996).After these, hearing groups used confirmatory re-sponses frequently as a way of providing feedback totheir listener and maintaining the interaction on apoint-by-point basis. The oral groups used a similarstrategy, although they used repetitions and confirma-tory responses more often and major modifications lessoften than their hearing peers. This difference for oralparticipants may be understood, possibly, as a predict-

Figure 4(a) Types of responses at age 8. Figure 4(b) Types of responses at age 11.

Figure 4(c) Types of responses at age 14. Figure 4(d) Types of responses at age 17.

The findings relating to age were indicative onlybecause of small sample sizes and because dyadsyounger that 8 years of age were not included. By 8years of age, the normally hearing dyads had seeminglyalready established good conversational maintenancestrategies and, in comparison, oral and signing same-aged dyads were more immature in their interactions,being less able to take their listeners’ needs into ac-count, as revealed by their higher rates of repetitionsand no responses and lower rates of major modifi-cations. This result accords with past research inyounger, hearing children, in whom, until about age 5years, a repetition of the original utterance is the mostcommonly used strategy in response to requests. At 6years elaboration of the original utterance begins (i.e.,minor modifications) and around 9 to 10 years majormodifications emerge (Karabenick & Miller, 1977; Ow-ens, 1996). The oral and signing groups may not havebehaved idiosyncratically, but simply in a manner ap-propriate to their age-equivalent level of communica-tion and language development, as found in youngernormally-hearing children. To confirm and expandthis finding, further research needs to include 5-year-old hearing, oral, and signing groups and to increasethe size of the study groups overall so that directmatches for chronological age and language ability maybe made.

Overall, the findings of this study suggested thatprofoundly deaf children have difficulty in using ap-propriate, productive pragmatic behaviors when re-questing clarification, when responding to requests forclarification, and at times of communication break-down. There may be a number of reasons for this pat-tern. Reduced quantity and quality of interactional ex-perience for profoundly deaf children (Clark, 1989;Gallaway & Woll, 1994; Johnson, Liddell, & Erting,1989; Ling, 1989) means fewer opportunities for thesebehaviors to be modeled by competent communicators,as well as fewer opportunities for the deaf child to at-tempt to apply the behaviors in meaningful settings.Similarly, other aspects of the communicative manage-ment of young profoundly deaf children, such as pro-longed “second guessing” the meaning of unintelligibleutterances and modifying input to avoid communica-tion breakdown, can also negatively affect the develop-ment of these pragmatic skills. In addition, Lai and Ly-


nas (1991) and Wood, Wood, Griffiths, and Howarth(1986) have shown that classroom environments areunlikely to be conducive to the development of theskills considered in this study because of the control-ling and didactic nature of many teachers’ communica-tion, resulting in a lack of opportunity for students tohave truly meaningful face-to-face interactions.

If profoundly deaf children are to acquire matureuse of the pragmatic skills considered in this study,they will need to have more direct and indirect experi-ence in meaningful face-to-face interaction in whichthey can both observe standard patterns of communi-cation and develop an understanding of the role of thespeaker and the listener in this communicative context.This is especially so for skills required at times of mis-understanding and at times of communication break-down, which deaf students confront more often thantheir normally hearing peers.

Received June 22, 1999; revised January 21, 2000; accepted Janu-ary 28, 2000

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