Initiation

McTear (1985) describes the development of children’s initiating strategies and raises the question of when children begin to use gestures and vocalizations as a means of eliciting responses. Mctear states that we can find fairly clear intentional initiations from about nine months, while Mashie et al. (2005) indicate that a child with NH, as well as a child who is hearing impaired, starts to intentionally communicate through the use of gestures already at around six months of age (see also section 2.2.6). These gestures indicate the process young children go through when they learn they can influence their environment but do not have yet a structured means such as oral or signed language (Mashie et al., 2005). McTear (1985) asks about the cries and gestures of children who are younger than nine months and cite Foster, who found that the earliest strategic initiations (i.e., those in which it might be possible to attribute some communicative intention to the child) in the ages of one month to five months involved self-topics, where the child tries to attract the caretaker’s attention with something like a cry. The caretaker’s task is to find the appropriate response.

Later on, the ability to direct attention to objects in the immediate environment (i.e., environmental topics) develops, followed by reaching behaviors at age of five months, but clearer examples are seen with pointing behaviors at fifteen months, and later still, through the use of attention-directing words.

Caretakers often treat children’s behaviors as if they were communicative and so establish them as initiations to which they provide an appropriate response. The

problem is to determine when one can attribute to the child the intention to communicate and to elicit a predictable response (McTear, 1985) (see also section 2.2.2).

Reichle, Halle, and Johnston (1993) write that the terms initiation and spontaneity are used interchangeably in the literature, whereas one should distinguish between them, since a child can initiate an act while being prompted by an adult rather than spontaneously (see also section 2.2.4 on the role of spontaneity). The development of spontaneity is a crucial factor in facilitating communication, especially in the case of persons with developmental disabilities.

According to Reichle et al. (1993), initiation is one of three broad classes of behavior that may occur in the context of social exchanges: initiation, maintaining and terminating. Initiation, as maintaining and terminating, can be expressed in one of three communicative functions- request, reject, and comment (see Table 2, p. 116 in Reichle et al.). Stern (2000) indicates also that the most straightforward and common examples of intentional communication are protolinguistic forms of requesting (p.

131). For example, the infant wants a cookie which the mother holds in her hand.

He/she reaches out a hand, palm up towards the mother while making grasping movements and looking back and forth between the hand and the mother’s face, shouting “Eh! Eh!”. This implies that the infant attributes an internal mental state to that referent person, namely, comprehension of the infant’s intention and the capacity to intend to satisfy that intention.

Regarding social initiations of preschool children without disabilities, Goldstein and Kaczmarek (1992, see p. 84 for reviews) summarize that they tend to contribute equal number of utterances in an interaction among themselves. Their tendency to balance their contributions is viewed as evidence that preschool children are able to adapt the frequency of communication to that of their partners.

The research on initiation focuses mostly on initiating social interactions of children with developmental disabilities due to its importance for various issues such as integration of these children in educational settings, and the development of social interactions in the community. For example, Spencer, Koester, and Meadow-Orlans (1993) examined initiations of communicative interactions between children who are deaf and children with NH, ages 28 to 36 months, in a day care program designed to promote successful integration of these children. Each of the participating groups showed a stronger tendency to initiate communication with same hearing status peers.

There was also relatively low number of initiations of the children who were deaf.

The authors found that even among young children, language ability rather than hearing status was associated with the frequency of communications that children experienced. Weisel, Most, and Efron (2005) note that a partial explanation for the low number of initiations might be the adults’ strong tendency to control and dominate the children’s initiation and maintenance of social interactions (Spencer &

Gutfreund, 1990; Weisel & Zandberg, 2002). Weisel et al. (2005) write that research on young children’s communication has focused mainly on aspects such as vocabulary and syntax in the process of language development. However, research on the pragmatic aspects of communication and the social interactions of young children with HI is limited. Their study examined initiation of interactions of young children with HI, aged 2–3 years, with peers with NH compared to their initiation of interactions with children with HI. The authors conclude that preschool educational programs that integrate children who are deaf together with their hearing peers should be aware of the social difficulties that already occur at a very young age. They relate to the fact that previous research reported the efficacy of intervention programs in the area of social skills with deaf and hearing children of various age groups. Their recommendation is to incorporate early intervention programs in the area of social interaction, including initiation strategies, at a very young age.

There are also differences between the strategies used to initiate interactions.

Duncan (1999) examined the social discourse/conversational skills of children ages 3.6-5.9 with HI and those with NH in an integrated setting. Results showed that the children with HI used more physical initiations strategies (i.e., touch) than did their peers with NH in integrated kindergartens.

In music therapy, Oldfield (1995) writes on her approach as a music therapist while trying to balance between following and initiating during the sessions. She indicates that “the actions of following and initiating are so closely intertwined that in many instances it is impossible to say who is the leader and who is the follower” (p.

226). Oldfield also refers to directive and nondirective approaches for achieving therapeutic objectives within a music therapy session. The questions she raises concerning this issue are whether the therapist suggests activities or waits for the child to initiate them, whether the therapist steers the musical improvisation in a particular direction or simply mirrors what the child has initiated, and whether the therapist leads the session or being led by the child who is the initiator. In her work

with children who have autistic spectrum disorders, Oldfield is extremely directive for the first and the last two minutes and much less so for the rest of the session, since she thinks it’s crucial for these children who may be confused and isolated, to be reassured by a framework surrounding an event.

Therapists in general and music therapists specifically deal constantly with the issue of balancing between following and initiating in their clinical work. This issue is intensified in working with severely delayed, disordered or absent language development, where the client’s initiation is crucial for communication development (e.g., Holck, 2002; Oldfield, 2006; Warwick & Muller, 1993). Another example is of Scheiby (2002), who describes her purposes in music therapy with clients with neurological trauma. Taking different initiatives by the clients is a major goal for them. As Holck (2002) writes: “For communicative development to take place, a child must have the desire, ability and possibility to influence the environment and be influenced by it. In this area of communication, music therapy particularly has the potential to help...“(p. 183).