The Effects of Linguistic Interventions on the Recognition of Facial Emotional Expressions in Hearing-Impaired Students

Most children with hearing loss encounter difficulties with experiential factors. This is because hearing loss affects language, communication, and cognition. Researchers indicated that hearing–impaired children experience delays in acquiring the Theory of Mind (ToM). This was an essential finding. Moreover, this finding implied that the acquisition of the ToM might depend on language acquisition. Conversely, it reflected that social and behavioral problems in deaf children might be attributed to cognitive deficits. Facial emotions are among the linguistic concepts that hearing–impaired children fail to understand, assign verbal labels, and express. These issues can adversely affect their emotional and communicative relationships. Such problems have been attributed to delayed language acquisition and limited personal experience with others. A few types of research are available concerning the effects of therapeutic or instructional interventions on the emotion and recognition skills of children with hearing impairments. The present study aimed to determine the effects of linguistic interventions on the aforementioned abilities among hearing–impaired students.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population of this research was all hearing–impaired students, aged 6–14 years who were studying in pre–school to sixth–grade in Baqcheban No1 exceptional school in Tehran City, Iran, in 2018. In total, 32 hearing–impaired students were selected by the non–sampling method; they were randomly divided into the experimental (n=18) and control (n=14) groups. The extent of severe to profound hearing loss was reported on their audiograms. Some students used hearing aids, and others had cochlear implants. A researcher–made software and questionnaire were employed to evaluate the study subjects. A researcher–made tool was also used to collect data on their emotions, understanding, and recognition, such as happiness, fear, sadness, anger, curiosity, surprise, embarrassment, and dislike. Both researcher–made tools presented good validity (%85) and reliability (Pearson correlation coefficient=90%). The experimental group participated in 18 thirty–minute weekly linguistic intervention sessions; however, the control group received no intervention. A speech therapist (corresponding author) provided the training. The obtained data were analyzed using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) in SPSS.

The presented intervention provided a significant difference in the pretest–posttest scores of the experimental group (p<0.001); however, there was no such difference in the controls. Thus, the explored ability of the experimental group was increased, compared to the control group. These changes can be attributed to the provided linguistic intervention.

The current research findings indicated that the ability to understand and recognize concepts related to facial expressions and emotions can be improved by a speech therapist using linguistic intervention programs among hearing–impaired students. Emotion recognition training delivered in a behaviorally–based intervention program can significantly improve emotion recognition skills in children at a wide range of ability levels. This can provide a new horizon for identifying, classifying, naming their experiences, effectively communicating with others in daily living activities, and alleviating such complications.