Recognition and Understanding of Emotions in Persons with Mild to Moderate Mental Retardation

Abstract

Deficits in intellectual ability have been linked to deficits in emotion understanding and consequently social competence. Research suggests that individuals with mental retardation exhibit deficits in their ability to identify emotional states in themselves and others, relative to normal mental age matched controls and peers and display an inability to decode facial expressions of emotion. Emotional experience is elicited in part by a cognitive appraisal of a situation toward a goal. However, the ecological validity of previous studies is limited. In this study we developed new materials to investigate the emotion understanding skills of persons with mild to moderate mental retardation. Six tasks included faces displaying emotion in context, comic strips, audio, video and audiovisual material of individuals expressing emotions in context. Results indicated that the mentally retarded were able to identify emotions in context than expressions without context and emotion understanding improved with increasing contextual cues and dynamic content.Intellectual ability has long been considered an important aspect of emotion understanding. Research suggests that individuals with mental retardation exhibit deficits in their ability to identify emotional states in themselves and others, relative to normal mental age matched controls and peers [1] and display an inability to decode facial expressions of emotion [2]. Emotional experience is elicited in part by a cognitive appraisal of a situation with respect to a goal. Emotions alter thought process often by directing attention toward some things and away from others. According to [3], emotional experiences are passions that happen to an individual, not actions s/he initiates. The subjective aspects of emotions are experiences that are both triggered by the thinking self and experienced by the self as happening to the self. The objective aspect of emotion consists of both learned and innate expressive displays and internal bodily responses. Both subjective and objective aspects of emotions can vary in intensity. Emotions are also expressed through body language or non verbal behavior.Facial expressions reveal a variety of basic emotions. Even body movement and positioning can convey a certain amount of emotion information. Emotional information is thus conveyed in the form of linguistic (semantic content of spoken language) and paralinguistic (facial expressions, vocal prosody, physical gestures and body postures) cues [4]. Recognition of emotion allows individuals to make quick inferences about the probable intentions and behavior of others. Emotions prepare individuals for action and also determine a change in those actions (how much we delay, approach or avoid and how well we perform a task). Emotion is the link between the event and response and helps shape future behaviour for more efficient interaction and communication with others. According to [2] the ability to distinguish whether a person is happy, furious or surprised is a basic human skill with consid...

Content and Other Resources Recommendations for Individuals with Intellectual Disability: A Review

“…Difficulty Expressing their Feelings. Individuals with ID have a profound difficulty with communication, especially verbal communication [85]. Children with ID, in particular, show specific difficulties in processing emotional expressions-a trait not shared by typically developing children [85].…”

Recognizing primary emotions in communication in adults with intellectual disability

“…Mekenzi i saradnici (McKenzie, Matheson, McKaskie, Hamilton & Murray, 2001) ukazuju na to da upravo zastupljenost situacijskih karakteristika u zadatku doprinosi poboljša-nom zaključivanju o emocijama drugih ljudi, a primenjeni video snimci u našem istraživanju verno su prikazivali emociju koja je kontekstualno uslovljena. Neki autori smatraju da na povećanu učestalost tačnih odgovora u zadacima prepoznavanja emocija utiče i primena zadataka u kojima se kombinuju vokalne karakteristike i facijalna ekspresija (Joseph & Ittyerah, 2015), što je takođe slučaj u našem istraživanju. Pojava da ispitanici sa lakom i umerenom IO ostvaruju u nekim procenama prilično visoke rezultate i da nema značajnih razlika između ove dve grupe (npr.…”

“…Sa druge strane, imajući u vidu da se za procenu sposobnosti prepoznavanja emocija u istraživanjima koriste različiti materijali (fotografije, crno-beli crteži, crteži u boji, animirani video prikazi i video materijali), a da autori sugerišu da se najverodostojniji rezultati dobijaju putem primene audio-video snimaka (Joseph & Ittyerah, 2015), možemo zaključivati o prednostima ovog istraživanja. Pojava da lingvistička obeležja poruke (sadržaj izgovorene poruke) mogu uticati na to kako ispitanik zaključuje o emocijama u ovom istraživanju je prevaziđena upotrebom izmišljenog jezika, pri čemu su korišćeni iskazi zadržali originalna prozodijska obeležja datih emocija.…”

Efficacy of a socioemotional learning programme in a sample of children with intellectual disability

“…It is important not to forget that emotions are primary sources of knowledge, playing a preponderant role in the adaptation of the individual to the environment (Wallon, ) and are also the initiators of the learning process (Damásio, ). Intellectual ability is thus considered an important aspect of emotion understanding being the emotional experience triggered, in part, by a cognitive assessment of a situation in relation to an objective (Joseph & Ittyerah, ). Hence, with a deficit in intellectual ability, it also manifests itself in social and emotional competences.…”

“…Some authors suggest that the emotion recognition and understanding in individuals with intellectual disabilities can be aided by contextual stimuli and by a dynamic content in the stimuli. Although these individuals understand happiness and sadness better than anger or fear, understanding is more evident in emphatic expressions than in subtle ones (Joseph & Ittyerah, ), in the same way that the identification of a neutral face that does not portray an emotion is more difficult than the identification of a positive or negative emotional expression in the subjects with intellectual disabilities comparatively with the subjects without intellectual disabilities (Moore, ).…”