Deaf Children on the Causes of Emotions

Recent findings have shown that deaf children have a different rationale for the emergence of emotions than their hearing peers. It was hypothesised that deaf children--in case of negative outcomes--are more concentrated on the loss of the desired state (which evokes sadness predictions), whereas their hearing peers focus more on the conditions that lead to the negative outcome (which brings about anger predictions, especially when the situation does not seem totally hopeless yet). The results in this research, obtained from nine- and 11-year-old deaf and hearing children, confirmed this pattern and showed that deaf children tend to concentrate primarily on the fulfilment of desires in their emotion predictions and explanations, whereas they neglected the factors that had led to the negative outcome. Also in contrast with hearing children, they ignored the controllability of the situation. Possibly, deaf children keep their messages short and simple to minimise a potential misinterpretation and they might hold on to this out of routine. Another explanation is that deaf children lack more advanced theory of mind capacities, due to the limited means of communication they are faced with in a hearing environment. Consequently, they have restricted opportunities to learn from their own and others' experiences in this respect.