Mind in Children with Profound and Severe Deafness - Essay Example

Introduction to Talk The talk was en d “Emotion Recognition and Theory of Mind in Children with Profound and Severe Deafness” and wasdelivered by Anna Jones. The investigator clearly identified that children with communication disabilities or difficulties find it hard to develop competent social behaviour such as emotion recognition and understanding the emotional states of other people. This research connects this to the ToM model with two stages as proposed by Tager-Flusberg and Sullivan (2000) which are: perception (ability to recognise emotions); cognitive (understanding other people’s mental states). The investigator further identifies methods to measure the cognitive abilities of children using the Sally-Anne false belief task, appearance reality and second order false belief tests. The literature review presented by the investigator reveals that children who are exposed later to sign language have restricted access to language while the low amount of opportunities to talk about emotional states also hampers the emotional recognition development of deaf children. Moreover exposure to BSL (British Sign Language) has been shown to improve awareness of mental states in deaf children while the delays in pictorial and non-verbal tasks remain as such. The use of SSE (Sign Supported English) has also been undertaken by the investigator which shows that SSE augments BSL and aids children in understanding the structures of written and spoken English. It has also been indicated that deaf children are not adept at interpreting lip patterns as 25 to 30% of all spoken language is visible through the lips. This in turn lowers the perceptibility of deaf children and acts as a communication barrier in its own right. The investigator has used two studies imposed on the same group of deaf children (experimental group) and children with normal hearing (control group) within the same age bracket and IQ levels in order to decipher communication gaps. The first study relied on first and second order false belief tasks using English, BSL and SSE as the communication mediums. Results of the first study showed that deaf children performed poorly at ToM tasks although SSE was used for augmenting BSL. Based on these it has been concluded that BSL has little relation to lip reading while the relationship between ToM and language remains unclear. The second study was composed to observe if deaf children could recognise emotions in dynamic faces just as good as or better than children with normal hearing. Results from the second study proved that deaf children were far poorer than children with normal hearing in recognising emotions in dynamic faces. However it also proved that recognition in static faces was far better than in dynamic faces. 2. Critique of Methods behind Research Although there is a definite link between emotional learning handicaps with children with disabilities and their particular handicaps but there is little quantification to the amount of learning disability present in certain areas such as deafness. Research has been employed to prove connections between ToM and autism (Ozonoff, Pennington, & Rogers, 1991) (Sabbagh, 2004) as well as Tom and Asperger’s syndrome (Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore, & Robertson, 1997) and traumatic brain injury (Henry, Phillips, Crawford, Ietswaart, & Summers, 2006) more frequently than it has been identified with deafness. It is also clear through research that ToM has a definite part to play in the development of social cognitive networks (Gallagher & Frith, 2003). In this sense using ToM to investigate deafness as an emotional learning disability is well supported in theory. Furthermore the tests used by the investigator including the Sally Anne test and the second order false belief test have been employed widely in investigations for learning handicaps and gaps in emotional learning. This provides strong scientific grounds to the methods employed to carry out the investigation though this applies to investigation of the cognitive part of ToM alone. 3. Strengths, Weaknesses and Limitations of Research The investigator chose to research how deaf children were handicapped at garnering emotional intelligence through learning. The sample groups of children used for both experimental and control measures were small in size consisting of no more than 20 children each. Moreover detailed characteristics of the groups have not been delineated by the investigator except for the age. Other than the age the investigator should have delineated the IQs of the children involved using simple IQ tests in order to determine if there were any aberrations in the experimental and control groups. Furthermore the investigator failed to see if the children in the control group and the experimental group were facing other challenges in addition to deafness such as ADHD, autism, Asperger’s Syndrome or the like. It is likely that the deaf children could have faced more issues than deafness alone which in turn biases the studies strictly against the experimental group. A level comparison of the children’s overall abilities and learning capabilities would have added far greater credibility to the study. In addition to the above, the investigator has revealed their methods for testing the cognitive stage of ToM (using Sally Anne false belief task, appearance reality and second order false belief tests) which are rather standard and can be compared to other such researches in the past and present. However the investigator has failed to fully delineate the method used to investigate the perceptible stage of ToM except that the children were given pictorials and short clips to recognise emotional states. The use of 5000 ms (or 5 seconds) worth of clips to display emotions is not fully supported in the investigator’s work through relevant literature review or other means as providing insight into recognition. Another major area warranting attention was the use of statistical tools to perform comparisons. The investigator chose to plot the results of children’s tests (for both experimental and control groups) without trying to develop any formal relationships or hypotheses that could either be proved or disproved through statistical means. 4. Comparison to Relevant Research The current investigation has indicated that the relationship between ToM and language remains unclear (slide 14, last point) although there is plenty of research to conclusively prove connections between language and ToM (Ruffman, Slade, Rowlandson, Rumsey, & Garnham, 2003). The lack of connections between language and ToM would indicate that ToM and emotional understanding would not be connected too as language and emotional understanding are connected together. This would disagree with the investigator’s earlier assumption that ToM and emotional understanding are connected therefore it would be necessary to assume that ToM and language are connected together. The investigator’s research shows that deaf children have lower emotional intelligence than children with normal hearing due to restrictions on their communication. Other research shows that deaf children placed in bilingual environments (that use sign language as well as oral learning techniques) outperform deaf children placed in single language environments using either sign language or oral learning alone (Meristo, Falkman, Tedoldi, Surian, & Siegal, 2007). However the current research does not indicate if the children in the experimental group came from institutions supporting bilingual learning or single language learning. Based on the research by Meristo, Falkman, Tedoldi, Surian and Siegal there are chances that deaf children from bilingual environments could perform a little better at the tests used in the current research. This is not to indicate that the deaf children would outperform the children with normal hearing but this does indicate that their performance would be a little better. The current research reaffirms the findings of some similar research (Rieffe & Terwogt, 2000) which indicated that deaf children had lower emotional understanding than children with normal hearing. This research also showed that deaf children’s emotional understanding bolstered with age such that ten year old deaf children had better emotional understanding than 6 and 7 year old deaf children compared to children with normal hearing within their age brackets. The kind of emotional learning handicaps indicated by the current research in relation to ToM are similar to those indicated by the research by Rieffe and Terwogt though quantitative comparisons may not be possible. In a similar manner the findings of the current research are supported by other similar research (Dyck & Denver, 2003) which finds the emtional understanding of deaf children to be lower than that of children with normal hearing. Again it has been proposed that using specialised learning techniques the emotional understanding of deaf children can be enhanced over time though it may not be comparable to that possessed by children with normal hearing. Overall the current research affirms the notion that deaf children posses handicaps at emotional learning in comparison to children with normal hearing. 5. Bibliography Baron-Cohen, S., Jolliffe, T., Mortimore, C., & Robertson, M. (1997). Another advanced test of theory of mind: evidence from very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome. Jounral of Child Psychology 38 , 813-822. Dyck, M. J., & Denver, E. (2003). Can the emotion recognition ability of deaf children be enhanced? A pilot study. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 8(3) . Gallagher, H. L., & Frith, C. D. (2003). Functional imaging of "theory of mind". Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(2) , 77-83. Henry, J. D., Phillips, L. H., Crawford, J. R., Ietswaart, M., & Summers, F. (2006). Theory of mind following traumatic brain injury: The role of emotion recognition and executive dysfunction. Neuropsychologia 44 , 1623-1628. Meristo, M., Falkman, K., Tedoldi, M., Surian, L., & Siegal, M. (2007). Language access and theory of mind reasoning: evidence from children in bilingual and oralist environments. Developmental Psychology 5 , 1156-1169. Ozonoff, S., Pennington, B. F., & Rogers, S. J. (1991). Executive function deficits in high-functioning autistic individuals: relationship to theory of mind. Journal of Child Psychology 32(7) , 1081-1105. Rieffe, C., & Terwogt, M. M. (2000). Deaf children's understanding of emotions: desires take precedence. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 41(5) , 601-608. Ruffman, T., Slade, L., Rowlandson, K., Rumsey, C., & Garnham, A. (2003). How language relates to belief, desire and emotion understanding. Cognitive Development 18 , 139-158. Sabbagh, M. A. (2004). Understanding orbitofrontal contributions of theory of mind reasoning: Implications for autism. Brain and Cognition 55 , 209-219. Read More