(PP1106) Adolescent Peer Relationships and Emotion Recognition as a Function of Auditory Status

This study examined the effect of auditory status on emotion recognition and the link between emotion recognition to social well-being in adolescents who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) or typical hearing (TH). Adolescents completed an online study examining emotion recognition and social well-being. Adolescents with TH attained adult-like emotion recognition, but DHH participants showed greater variability. Better subjective emotion perception coincided with less loneliness, stronger friendships, and more emotional support for both groups. These data highlight the value of understanding social consequences associated with missing emotional cues in adolescents, particularly in those who are DHH.

Summary: 

Successful communication requires integration of multisensory cues requiring not only the content of the message, but also nonverbal cues through both the auditory and visual domains. Perception of suprasegmental speech cues affects emotion recognition, which also could influence interpretation of social cues (e.g., identifying emotions, theory of mind) (Gebauer et al., 2014). Hearing loss disproportionately affects perception of suprasegmental cues and, subsequently, auditory emotion recognition due to reduced audibility of sound, which may lead to higher risk of poor peer relationships and interactions in adolescents who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) versus those with typical hearing (TH) (Davidson et al., 2019; Morgan, 2021; Picou et al., 2018). Cochlear implant (CI) signal processing creates a challenge for auditory emotion recognition due to degraded spectral resolution in the signal, which limits suprasegmental cues associated with emotion recognition. This study examines the effect of auditory status on emotion recognition; the relationship between objective and subjective emotion recognition; and the relationship between emotion recognition and social well-being in adolescents with TH or DHH.

Participants include 24 adolescents (13-17 years) with TH (n=18) or who were DHH (n=6). All but one adolescent in the DHH group received their auditory technology by five years. All adolescents completed an online study that included (a) objective emotion recognition via the Morgan Emotional Speech Set (MESS), which presented audio files in four emotional speaking styles (angry, calm, happy, sad) (Morgan, 2019; Morgan, 2021); (b) subjective emotion recognition via the Emotional Communication in Hearing Questionnaire (EMO-CHeQ), a 16-item measure designed to assess experiences of hearing and handicap when listening to signals containing vocal emotion information; and (c) social well-being (i.e., loneliness, companionship, perceived rejection) via the NIH Toolbox Emotional Domain measures.