Analysis of early expressive communicative behaviour of young children with significant cognitive and motor developmental delays

Background Related to the target group of young children with a significant cognitive and motor developmental delay, the aims of this study were to obtain more insight into (the interrelations between) several characteristics of these children's expressive communicative behaviour and to explore associations between child behaviour, partner behaviour and contextual factors. Methods A coding scheme was specifically developed and used to code observational data of 38 children. Three different communication-eliciting situations were video recorded. Potential communicative acts were detected, described, coded and counted within various coding categories. Data analysis mainly involved chi-square tests in combination with Cramer's V and Friedman's two-way analysis of variance by ranks. Findings Potential communicative acts of young children with significant cognitive and motor developmental delay can be described in terms of focus, used modalities, level of initiative, communication complexity, signs of functionality and signs of emerging intentionality. The communicative focus of the children is mostly elicited by the prompt given by the communication partner and relates to certain behavioural modalities. Specific scaffolding behaviours of the partner are associated with the communication complexity of the children. Conclusion This study provides some concrete suggestions on how to organise the interaction with these children.