Facial expressions are especially relevant for deaf people because, in addition to the emotional content, they assume linguistic functions exclusive to sign languages. Objective: We aimed to verify whether the better recognition of facial expressions in deaf people is also maintained for stimuli with greater ecological validity. Method: In the present study, we investigated the recognition of static (photographs) and dynamic (videos) facial expressions in: (a) deaf signers with profound congenital or early acquired deafness (up to 2 years of age); (b) hearing individuals who knew sign language; and (c) hearing individuals who did not know sign language. Facial expressions of joy, sadness, fear, and anger in static and dynamic conditions were presented at 4 intensities (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). Results: In the dynamic condition, we found that deaf individuals had lower recognition scores compared with the other 2 groups of hearing individuals (p Ͻ .05). However, in the static condition, no differences between groups were found (p Ͼ .05). Conclusion:Those results indicate that the use of facial expressions in sign language does not necessarily favor emotion recognition, probably because facial expressions have linguistic properties not related to emotional content.