Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2017, 164–177 doi:10.1093/deafed/enw072 Advance Access publication December 7, 2016 Empirical Manuscript EMPIRICAL MANUSCRIPT Influences on Facial Emotion Recognition in Deaf Children Francesc Sidera*, Anna Amadó, and Laura Martínez University of Girona *Correspondence should be sent to Francesc Sidera, Plaça Sant Domènec 9, 17071 Girona, Spain (e-mail: francesc.sidera@udg.edu). 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. Deaf children born to hearing parents who have not been exposed to a natural language since early infancy may have diffi- culty in various areas of development, such as language, verbal intelligence, academic achievement, or social understanding (Dyck & Denver, 2003). In this regard, the main objectives of this research are to study whether there are differences between deaf and hearing children’s capacity for facial emotion recognition (specifically, labeling prototypical expressions; see Castro, Cheng, Halberstadt, & Grühn, 2016), and to study to what extent language and the characteristics of deafness may explain these possible differences. Such research is relevant because of its importance for interpersonal communication and social competence (Nelson, Welsh, Trup, & Greenberg, 2011). Emotion Recognition in Deaf and Hearing Children Some studies have found deficits in social understanding, or the- ory of mind, in deaf children born to hearing parents (in particu- lar, in their capacity to reason about false beliefs and states of knowledge) compared with hearing infants or native-signing deaf children (Peterson & Siegal, 2000), even when low-verbal tasks were used (Levrez, Bourdin, Le Driant, d’Arc, & Vandromme, 2012; Schick, de Villiers, de Villiers, & Hoffmeister, 2007). Delays have also been observed in the area of emotional understanding such as, for example, in the ability to understand false belief-based emotions (Pyers & de Villiers, 2003; cited in de Villiers, 2005). However, as we shall see now, there is no agreement in the litera- ture as to whether deaf children’s capacities to facially recognize emotions are similar to those of hearing children. The “enhancement hypothesis” holds that deaf children may recognize some facial emotions better than hearing chil- dren, because from an early age they use visual clues as a basis for interpreting them. The amount of literature supporting this hypothesis is limited. Hopyan-Misakyan, Gordon, Dennis, & Papsin (2009) found that deaf children with cochlear implant (CI) (born to hearing parents and who communicated only orally in the school or therapy environments) aged from 7 to 13 were slightly better than control children at recognizing emotions in low-intensity items (photographs), and in angry and scared faces. Furthermore, Hosie, Gray, Russell, Scott, & Hunter (1998) observed that deaf children (attending a school that uses total communication and encourages British Sign Language at the secondary school level) were more accurate than hearing chil- dren in a task requiring them to give appropriate labels to Received April 21, 2016; revisions received October 14, 2016; editorial decision October 21, 2016; accepted November 2, 2016 © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com 164 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jdsde/article/22/2/164/2645621 by guest on 01 August 2022