Recognition of Emotions from Facial and Vocal Expressions by People with Mental Retardation

Abstract

Examined the understanding of nonverbal communication by adults with mental retardation (MR), focusing on the relationship between visual perception skills and the accuracy with which they identified others' expressions of emotion. Subjects (Ss) were 124 adults with mild and moderate MR (average age 20.6 yrs) and 128 college students without MR. Ss were asked to rate stimuli in which feelings of happiness, sadness, anger or dislike were expressed. In all 3 experimental conditions, 'voice only', 'face only', (moving pictures on videotape), and 'voice plus face' (moving pictures with sound), the Ss with MR identified the feelings less accurately than the college students did. In the face only and voice plus face conditions, happiness was identified more accurately than the other feelings. The Ss with MR identified the emotions in the voice only condition better than in the face only condition. The Ss with MR were more likely to confuse the expression of happiness with the expressions of anger and dislike. There was a positive relationship between visual perception skills (measured on the Frostig Developmental Test of Visual Perception) and identification of emotions in 2 of 3 conditions (face, voice plus face) in the Ss with MR. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)