Emotion recognition in children with profound and severe deafness: do they have a deficit in perceptual processing?

Amanda Ludlow, Pam Heaton, Delphine Rosset, Peter Hills, Christine Deruelle

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

24 Citations (Scopus)
115 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Findings from several studies have suggested that deaf children have difficulties with emotion identification and that these may impact upon social skills. The authors of these studies have typically attributed such problems to delayed language acquisition and/or opportunity to converse about personal experiences with other people (Peterson & Siegal, 1995, 1998). The current study aimed to investigate emotion identification in children with varying levels of deafness by specifically testing their ability to recognize perceptual aspects of emotions depicted in upright or inverted human and cartoon faces. The findings from the study showed that, in comparison with both chronological- and mental-age-matched controls, the deaf children were significantly worse at identifying emotions. However, like controls, their performance decreased when emotions were presented on the inverted faces, thus indexing a typical configural processing style. No differences were found across individuals with different levels of deafness or in those with and without signing family members. The results are supportive of poor emotional identification in hearing-impaired children and are discussed in relation to delays in language acquisition and intergroup differences in perceptual processing.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)923-928
Number of pages6
JournalJournal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
Volume32
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2010

Keywords

  • Adolescent
  • Child
  • Cognition Disorders
  • Cues
  • Deafness
  • Emotions
  • Facial Expression
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Intelligence Tests
  • Male
  • Neuropsychological Tests
  • Photic Stimulation
  • Psychomotor Performance
  • Recognition (Psychology)
  • Social Perception

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