Abstract
The relation between knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) and the ability to decode facial expressions of emotion was explored in this study. Subjects were 60 college students, half of whom were intermediate level students of ASL and half of whom had no exposure to a signed language. Subjects viewed and judged silent video segments of stimulus persons experiencing spontaneous emotional reactions representing either happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, or fear/surprise. Results indicated that hearing subjects knowledgeable in ASL were generally better than hearing non-signers at identifying facial expressions of emotion, although there were variations in decoding accuracy regarding the specific emotion being judged. In addition, females were more successful decoders than males. Results have implications for better understanding the nature of nonverbal communication in deaf and hearing individuals.
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We are grateful to Karl Scheibe for comments on an earlier version of this paper and to Erik Coats for statistical analysis. This study was conducted as part of a Senior Honors thesis at Wesleyan University.
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Goldstein, N.E., Feldman, R.S. Knowledge of American sign language and the ability of hearing individuals to decode facial expressions of emotion. J Nonverbal Behav 20, 111–122 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02253072
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02253072