Emotional communication

The expression of emotions is one of the oldest and most basic communication systems for humans and animals. Between different species there are various ways of expressing emotion, but within one species, emotion signals evoke few misunderstandings. Pulled-up lips, or a tail between the legs, are only open to one interpretation. Even though many of these emotion signals can be very subtle, they are learned very early in life. More precisely, within a few days or weeks, young born babies appear to differentiate between various facial emotion expressions in other humans and react appropriately (Caron, Caron & Myers, 1982; Harris, 1989; Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde & Svejda, 1983; Izard, 1994). This was the reason for Darwin (1872) to claim that human beings have a universal, innate repertoire of understanding and expressing discrete emotion expressions and that these expressions are meaningful from birth. The existence of an innate recognition device is difficult to validate (Harris, 1989), but it is generally acknowledged within contemporary emotion theories that the meaning of a number of basic emotional behaviour patterns - in terms of significance for the person who expresses them - is appreciated quite early in life (Harris, 1989).

Since the expression of emotions relies heavily on non-verbal communication, one would perhaps expect deaf children to master this system as well as their hearing peers or even better. However, within the language dominated human society, emotion communication has become more and more verbal. Controlling your face and telling somebody in a polite way that you do not like his behaviour seems to be the civilized way to express anger. As soon as language is involved problems can be expected in deaf children. Indeed, even in labelling emotions deaf children show impairments (Odom, Blanton & Lankhuf, 1973). When we do not restrict our scope to the exchange of emotion signals, but also consider reaction patterns, an impaired emotional competence in deaf children becomes even more visible. In this paper, we attempt to discuss emotional competence of deaf children as compared to hearing peers, which will be largely based on our own studies. Examining emotional functioning in deaf children will provide insight into emotion socialisation and give an idea about the impact of the environment on this learning process.

Deaf participants

The studies on deaf children that stem from our own research, and that will be discussed in this paper, involve prelingually and profoundly deaf children (mean age around 11 years old), who have no other handicaps apart from their deafness. All deaf children came from Effatha, a primary school for the deaf in the Netherlands (note that children attend primary school in the Dutch system from 4 to12 years). They participated in a standard educational program, which requires a minimum of average intelligence. IQ assessments by the school psychologist confirmed that the deaf children were of average intelligence or higher.

Nearly all deaf children had entered this school’s kindergarten for the deaf when they were 3-years-old. They had not attended another kindergarten or day-care centre before. Deaf women looked after the children in the kindergarten. The teachers at Effatha communicate in Sign-Supported Dutch (SSD), which most deaf children use among themselves. An important limitation of this research is that all children involved had hearing parents. Parents had been receiving family supervision from the moment that their child was diagnosed with a hearing loss. This included teaching SSD to the parents and other family members. Most parents use SSD to communicate with their deaf child. Yet, the school psychologist judged the SSD skills of most parents as average or poor. Although sign language can certainly be a fully-fledged communication device, reality shows that sign language skills of hearing family members rarely exceeds the communication skills of a four year old child (Vaccari & Marschark, 1997). Deaf children’s responses in various studies were compared with a hearing control group, which was matched for gender and had an average or above intelligence.

In our studies, the participants were tested individually. The deaf children were tested by a non-familiar hearing, female staff member, using Sign-Supported Dutch (SSD). The instructions given to the hearing children were accurately translated into SSD. The sessions with hearing children were tape-recorded. The sessions with deaf children were recorded by tape and by video. The deaf children’s experimenter verbalised their responses. Transcriptions were derived from the tapes after the sessions. A deaf person compared the written text with the video-recordings. No inaccuracies were found.

Emotional competence

Facial expressions for happiness, anger, fear and sadness are universal and are univocally recognised in all cultures (Ekman & Friesen, 1975). Deaf children also show no difficulties in this respect. Problems among deaf children arise with more complex emotions, such as guilt, shame or jealousy. These emotions arose hand in hand with an increasingly complex human society and children learn them through their development. The acquisition of this broad spectrum of culturally learned emotions depends on the number of times that they are used, observed or overheard. Some people go as far as to state that the number of emotions we have (and feel) depends on the preceding number of emotion labels.

Due to their limited communication means within their hearing environment, deaf children could be expected to be confronted with more complex emotion references and the subsequent information less often. Indeed, we have seen in several studies that deaf children mainly restrict their emotion predictions to the four basic emotion labels, whereas hearing children, even when they were a few years younger, usually provide a broader spectrum of emotion words. For example, all deaf children would refer to happy with respect to a pleasant occasion, whereas hearing children also used words such as “excited”, “thrilled”, “pleased” or “contented” (Rieffe, Meerum Terwogt & Smit, 2000, 2003; Rieffe, Meerum Terwogt, Dirks & Smit, 2001).

The implication of this is that deaf children have to rely a great deal on their own observations in order to gain knowledge about emotions, whereas their hearing peers can overhear verbal interactions and test their newly acquired ideas on “knowledgeable others” (Meerum Terwogt & Olthof, 1989). Thus, this delay in deaf children starts off with problems in the concept formation, which deals with the causes and consequences of emotions. However, it also affects their further development that deals with a broad framework of social rules concerning emotion regulation. Not only the meaning of emotion signals among humans, but also the expression of emotions became less univocal in the course of evolution. Uncensored primitive emotion patterns are usually unappreciated in modern societies. A person who expresses him or herself too bluntly is thought to be moved to the extent that regulation has become impossible, to be rude and insensitive to any social consequences, or to be emotionally incompetent. Cultural rules have caused most people to express their feelings in socially acceptable ways. In other words, direct self interest should be balanced with social concerns.

Deaf children will also notice that their emotional behaviour sometimes causes unwanted reactions from their social environment or fails to obtain the desired result. The development of an alternative approach, however, often requires more information; “Why am I not allowed to do this?” and “With what can I get away?”. For a long time these questions are too demanding for the child’s own problem solving strategies. Verbal communication is an essential tool in this respect within the hearing children’s development.

Focus on desires

When children were asked to explain emotions in others, we found that deaf children showed a common understanding of simple emotion scripts, such as happiness with a present, or fear of hearing a strange noise when it is dark. However, an unexpected finding was that deaf children more often referred to desires than the hearing children when talking about emotions (Rieffe et al, 2000; 2001; 2003). Even in situations where negotiation would be useful to obtain their goals, the ten-year-old deaf children in one of our studies mostly failed to provide their communication partner with additional information. They simply repeated their own desires (Meerum Terwogt & Rieffe, 2004a). Obviously, this kind of communication in deaf children can easily be given the label of “stubborn” or “difficult to handle”, as they are frequently labelled by people working with them on a daily basis.

We assumed that impaired communication skills are largely causing this phenomenon. Even when deaf children have the necessary skills in sign language, often their parents do not. Besides, other studies have shown that hearing communication partners often react with irritation in their interactions with deaf children (Lederberg & Mobley, 1990; Wood, 1991). Both parents and teachers frequently provide concise or no explanations about their own behaviour or that of others (Gregory, 1976; Marschark, 1993). It seems reasonable to assume that if hearing adults avoid to talk about the causes of emotions and behaviour with deaf children, these children will not learn about its importance for and its effect on daily social interactions. This approach is certainly not helpful to obtain a common understanding.

Another effect of communicating without reference to the underlying causes is that deaf children will not take these causes into account when they reason about other people’s (emotional) behaviour. In another study, we saw that deaf children were less influenced by the controllability of situations (Rieffe et al, 2003). Parents who had to cancel a nice trip, for example a visit to the zoo, because their car broke down, could expect a similar reaction from their deaf child as when it was the child’s voluntary choice not to go out anymore (for example, because they wanted the child to clean his or her room). Under both circumstances, deaf children said that they would feel sad. Hearing children, in contrast, did differentiate between more or less controllable situations: you are sad when you do not get what you want, but the outcome is inevitable and it is not your parents’ fault either. Yet, you are angry when you think that your parents intentionally blocked your wish. The frequent “sad” responses by the deaf children can be interpreted as a strongly outcome-oriented reaction, in which preceding processes are neglected. This focus was indeed reflected in children’s explanations for their emotion-predictions. Whereas hearing children frequently referred to the outcome and the process - the role that their parents had played in this negative scenario – for the more controllable stories, the deaf children mostly referred to the outcome only for both kinds of stories (Rieffe et al, 2003).

An additional explanation could be that deaf children feel powerless to influence the situation and change their parents’ minds. In this respect, anger is the opposite from helplessness. In contrast with sadness and fear, anger is a response that requires power and the idea that one can change the situation for the better. It is remarkable that anger typically has such a negative notation and that it is frequently mixed up with aggression. Many parents and educators instruct their children that one should not become angry (Gottman & Decleir, 1997). However, if one is capable of expressing one’s anger in a culturally acceptable manner and in situations where it is culturally justified, anger expression gives a clear signal that one strongly disagrees with the other person’s actions. Such a reaction to regulate social contacts can be as important as positive reinforcement.

Handling conflicts

Considering the large number of restrictions that societies usually put on the expression of anger, controlling this expression can be regarded as the ultimate test of social intelligence. Teachers of deaf children judged that deaf children’s reactions in peer conflict situations were more aggressive and less assertive when compared to hearing children (Meerum Terwogt & Rieffe, 2004b). Additionally, we examined how deaf children said they would handle peer-conflict situations. Children were presented with stories that we thought would evoke socially justified anger. An example of such a story is: “Imagine that you planned to go to the swimming pool after school-time with two of your friends. You agree to meet at a certain point. You go to the meeting-point in time, but your two friends are not there yet. You wait for a long time, but they do not show up. Eventually you go home again, alone. The next day you see your two friends at the playground in front of your school. They act as if nothing has happened and tell you that they had a nice time at the swimming-pool together. You feel very angry.”

Children were asked after each vignette how they would react, how they thought the other child(ren) would respond to their reaction, and how they thought it would influence their relationship, e.g., would they still be friends. Children were also asked how angry they would feel. They could rate their anger on a five-point scale, and although the various stories evoked different anger intensities, this did not differ between deaf and hearing children per vignette. Aggressive reactions, such as hitting or cursing, were hardly mentioned by either deaf or hearing children. However, deaf children frequently failed to motivate their anger. Deaf children more often solely expressed their anger by telling the other child(ren) that they should not be so stupid. In contrast, hearing children more often explained the harm that had been done, such as “I had been waiting there for a long time” or “I didn’t go swimming, I just went home again”. It is not surprising that deaf children expected less empathic responses from the other child(ren). Deaf children thought that the other child would mainly react in a negative manner, such as “You are stupid yourself” or “It is your own fault”. Hearing children expected more apologies (“I am sorry”) or remorse (“We just forgot, we won’t do it again/ next time”). However, although deaf children seemed realistic in their expectations to these questions, this was refuted by their responses to the last question, which gave information about the continuation of the relationship or friendship. Equally often, deaf and hearing children thought that this incident would not harm their friendship (70%) (Rieffe & Meerum Terwogt, submitted).

Considering the fact that the conflict situation for the deaf children seemed to escalate rather than reach a solution, their positive estimation of the continuation of their friendship does not appear to be very realistic. Nevertheless, it is possible that within the deaf subculture, blunt anger responses are an accepted form of expression. It might be that one does not discuss interpersonal problems and conflicts, but merely waits until the impact of the conflict wanes over time. Additionally, there might be a common acceptance of “social clumsiness” within the deaf culture. Thus, the expectation that the friendship would not be harmed could be realistic for deaf children. Yet, this is strongly in conflict with studies which show that friendships among deaf children are less stable than friendships among hearing children (Lederberg, Rosenblatt, Vandell & Chapin, 1987). It also appears that deaf children initiate interactions as often as hearing children, but they are more likely to be rejected by their peers (Cappelli, Daniels, Durieux-Smith, McGrath & Neuss, 1995, Vandell & George, 1981). This strongly suggests that deaf children not only show less socially competent behaviour, but also that they are impaired on a meta-cognitive level, because they appear to have a lesser understanding of the effect of their own behaviour on others. This is in line with their frequently noted theory of mind problems, which refers to an impaired understanding of other people’s mental processes (Peterson & Siegal, 2000; Rieffe & Meerum Terwogt, 2002).

Hiding emotions: self-protection and altruism

Sometimes it might be more appropriate not to show your true feelings. There are two general motives for hiding one’s emotions: self-protection and altruism. In the case of self-protection, one anticipates negative reactions from the social environment, e.g. peers that will laugh at you or bully you. Altruistic reasons for masking one’s emotions are aimed at avoiding hurting another person’s feeling, e.g. when one receives a disappointing gift even though the sender really made an effort to find something nice. Deaf children say that they would mask their true feelings as often as hearing children in situations where this is done out of self-protection. However, deaf children are less willing to do so when it concerns altruistic motives (Hosie, Russell, Gray, Scott, Hunter, Banks & Macauley, 2000). Additionally, Hosie and colleagues found that hearing children more often provided plausible explanations for their masking attempts. Deaf children more often failed to do so, especially in the case of altruistic explanations.

The interpretation of these findings is not that straightforward. On the one hand, a plausible explanation is that masking out of altruistic motives is more advanced than masking out of self-protective motives, because the feedback of others in situations that require self-protective masking are open and direct. If you are laughed at when you are crying, the connection between the two elements is easily made. However, if you have hurt another person’s feelings this is not always obvious. On many occasions, the other will try to hide his or her disappointment. One will have to have an understanding of the other person’s mental states in order to apply altruistic motives. As noted before, the so-called theory of mind development in deaf children has been shown to be impaired in many studies (see for overview Peterson & Siegal, 2000).

On the other hand, it has been argued that children learn at a very young age to behave in socially acceptable ways, e.g. they are quickly corrected if they do not thank their grandmother, regardless of whether the gift is appreciated or not. This kind of prosocial masking could occur even without respect for the sender’s feelings, just because you are told to do so, thus theory of mind knowledge is not yet required. We see that this kind of masking comes before self protective masking in development (Cole, 1986), which indeed indicates that this only concerns learned cultural rules, probably without any consideration for the underlying reasons. It is remarkable, however, that even children with autism appear to learn these rules quite quickly (Begeer, Rieffe & Meerum Terwogt, 2004), as this group of children do not fully participate in the usual daily social interactions too (although the cause is different of course). This makes it even more striking that deaf children appear to be relatively inattentive to these kinds of social rules.

In conclusion

One might argue that the deaf children’s responses, in the various studies that were presented in this paper, could have been caused by a delayed language development. Undoubtedly, the language development of most deaf children will be less extensive and refined than that of their hearing peers. Yet, the instructions and vignettes that we used in our studies did not require sophisticated language skills, even four year old hearing children should be able understand those stories and answer the questions, and the deaf children in our studies had a mean age of eleven years old. The interpreter who interviewed the deaf children never noted any problems in this respect; deaf children appeared to have a good understanding of the stories and the questions. However, their language delay will have affected and limited their communication skills in preceding years.

Possibly, the predominantly hearing environment of deaf children does not set them many requirements with respect to their emotion socialisation and other social rules. Hearing children learn intensively through their daily social interactions and observations about emotion regulation of their own emotions, the expression of emotions, understanding and reacting appropriately to emotions of others and many other aspects of emotional competence. Emotions are an essential part of their daily conversations, directly or indirectly, and they also partly determine the course of those conversations. If deaf children want to catch up in this respect with their hearing peers, they obviously need explicit support from their social environment. It might not be easy to talk in an open and explicit way about emotions, but without that kind of information, one should hardly expect a child to master the complex rules that regulate our social relationships.

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