Children with visual impairment and additional disabilities (VIAD) may fail to perceive visual information from their parents’ facial expressions and gestures. In cases of congenital deafblindness (CDB), auditory information may also be limited. The parents of such children may experience challenges in detecting their child’s subtle bodily and gestural expressions. Such interactions indicate difficulties with accessibility, which may in turn compromise the child’s developmental outcomes and even the emotional relationship between the parent and child. However, the systematic use of bodily-tactile modality (touch and movement) during interactions could help to compensate for the child’s sensory loss. This thesis therefore investigates the effects of a bodily-tactile early intervention on the interactions between mothers and their children with VIAD or CDB, using a time-series design with a baseline, intervention, and follow-up; the follow-up spanned Studies II, III, and IV.

In Study I, a mother was guided in the use of a bodily-tactile modality in which she imitated her three-year-old child with CDB. The results show that the mother’s tactile imitations increased during the intervention, that imitation exchanges became longer, and that the child began to respond more to her mother’s imitations through smiling and placing her hands on her mother’s face. Moreover, the child and her mother became more emotionally available to each other.

In Studies II, III, and IV, four mothers were guided in the use of the bodily-tactile modality in interactions with their one-year-old children with VIAD. In Study II, we observed that the mother increased her use of the bodily-tactile modality in early social play routines and in tactile signing during the intervention. Her child developed new gestural expressions and imitated signs based on his bodily-tactile experiences. Their emotional availability was already good at baseline, yet there was still an increase during the intervention in the mother’s non-intrusiveness and the child’s responsiveness. The results of Study III suggest that the intervention increased reciprocity in the mother-child interactions, which was itself based on changes in the mothers’ interactional behavior. In Study IV, the mothers increased their use of bodily-tactile play routines, tactile anticipatory cues, tactile noticing responses, and tactile signs during the intervention. Moreover, the children and mothers were emotionally more available to each other during the intervention.

Together, the results suggest that the bodily-tactile early intervention aimed at the mothers had a positive impact on the embodied participation and gestural communication of their children with VIAD. Positive changes were also seen in the emotional availability and reciprocity between the children and their mothers.