Effortful control and expressive language in deaf or hard-of-hearing children: The contributions of caregiver language and parenting stress

Caregiver-child interactions reflect an important dynamic that supports spoken language development in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. This study examined how child effortful control interacts with caregiver language and parenting stress to affect child expressive language. Fifty-nine DHH children (mean age = 5;9) and their primary caregiver participated in a play interaction where expressive language was measured. Caregivers completed questionnaires measuring child effortful control and parenting stress. When caregivers used higher quality language, DHH children demonstrated stronger expressive language regardless of effortful control level compared to when caregivers used lower quality language. Additionally, a trend suggested DHH children with higher effortful control showed stronger expressive language skills when parenting stress was low. However, this trend was not observed when caregivers reported greater levels of parenting stress. These findings support the need to investigate caregiver characteristics that support DHH children in leveraging their inherent regulatory abilities to achieve better language outcomes.