Deafness: How functional are deaf children’s emotional skills?
Carolien Rieffe, PhD
Problems in social functioning are frequently noted in the literature with respect to deaf or hearing impaired children. Yet, their emotional development is a severely understudied area, even though one of the underlying factors for these problems in the social domain is most likely an impaired emotional
development. To date, besides impaired emotion vocabulary and emotion knowledge, our studies imply that deaf children are less aware than their hearing peers of the communicative function of emotions, and they seem to overlook the effect of emotion displays in interactions with their peers and caregivers. We are currently also examining the understanding of their own emotions and their emotion regulation. Nowadays most deaf children are fitted with a cochlear implant (CI). Our present research aims to study the impact of having a CI on children's emotional development. Deaf children who participate in our studies show no other neurological deficits, except for their deafness, which could have caused the outcomes.
Links
Dutch Sign Language Dictionary
www.gebarencentrum.nl/gebarenwoordenboek.asp
American Sign Language Dictionary
www.handspeak.com/word
Nederlandse Stichting voor het Dove en Slechthorende Kind
www.nsdsk.nl
About research on hearing impairments
www.hoorplatform.nl