Interventions to Improve the Quality and Development of Intersubjective Communication

This chapter outlines a developmental psychological framework for educational interventions to improve quality and development of intersubjective communication between learners (children and adults) with congenital deafblindness and their educators (parents, teachers, and professional caregivers). Video-feedback intervention studies proved to be effective for the quality and development of communication, on three layers of intersubjectivity: (1) harmonious interactions and attunement, (2) meaning-making, and (3) symbolic communication and perspective-taking. Most of these intervention studies followed a diagnostic approach to communication coaching and were focused on the first and the second layers. Some studies demonstrated that learners with deafblindness were only able to show communication forms from the advanced layers when educators themselves demonstrated these more complex communication forms.