Influences on Facial Emotion Recognition in Deaf Children

Abstract

This exploratory research is aimed at studying facial emotion recognition abilities in deaf children and how they relate to linguistic skills and the characteristics of deafness. A total of 166 participants (75 deaf) aged 3-8 years were administered the following tasks: facial emotion recognition, naming vocabulary and cognitive ability. The children's teachers or speech therapists also responded to two questionnaires, one on children's linguistic-communicative skills and the other providing personal information. Results show a delay in deaf children's capacity to recognize some emotions (scared, surprised, and disgusted) but not others (happy, sad, and angry). Notably, they recognized emotions in a similar order to hearing children. Moreover, linguistic skills were found to be related to emotion recognition skills, even when controlling for age. We discuss the importance of facial emotion recognition of language, conversation, some characteristics of deafness, and parents' educational level.

The role of motion and intensity in deaf children’s recognition of real human facial expressions of emotion

“…In contrast to some previous studies, no relationship was found between language ability and emotion recognition (e.g. Dyck et al, 2004;Sidera et al, 2016). This may indicate that the visual and contextual cues are sufficient for deaf children to recognise emotions when using ecologically valid stimuli in the domain of emotion recognition.…”

“…The current finding that deaf children perform similarly to their hearing peers in middle childhood is consistent with the studies of Hosie et al (1998), Hopyan-Misakyan et al (2009 and Most and Aviner (2009), but contrasts with the findings of Dyck et al (2004), Ludlow et al (2010) and Sidera et al (2016). In addition to the extra social information that our stimuli provided by using real human and dynamic faces, it is noteworthy that the children in our study were within the normal range in their non-verbal intellectual ability.…”

“…There is some evidence that emotion recognition delays extend beyond the preschool period for moderate-profoundly deaf children. For example, Sidera, Amadó, and Martínez (2016) recently found 3-8year-old deaf children to be relatively poorer than hearing controls in their ability to match emotion words to facial expressions of emotion portrayed in cartoons, but only in the emotions, fear, disgust and surprise. These results revealed that linguistic skills were related to emotion recognition, even when controlling for age.…”

“…A number of studies where poorer performance in deaf children has been observed have utilised cartoons or still photographs (e.g. Ludlow et al, 2010;Sidera et al, 2016;Wiefferink et al, 2013). For example, Ludlow et al (2010) found that both deaf and hearing children were able to recognise emotions in real human faces better than cartoons.…”

Does Emotional Intelligence Have an Impact on Linguistic Competences? A Primary Education Study

“…So much so that it has been found that language explains the variance in emotional comprehension better than age or family environment [25]. In particular, Ruffman et al [35] demonstrated that performance in syntax correlates positively with facial emotion recognition; and Sidera et al [36] found that facial emotion recognition correlated with receptive vocabulary and linguistic and communicative abilities. On the other side, Pons et al [31] found a high correlation between grammar abilities and emotion comprehension in children aged from 4 to 11 years, and Vilches [37] identified a positive influence between reading competence and EI, arguing that through reading students have access to roles played by different characters in various scenarios that enable them to respond emotionally to their own thoughts and feelings.…”