Emotional Recogition Ability among Incarcerated Youth

The purpose of this study was to consider emotional recognition ability among incarcerated youth. Specifically, thirty-eight inmates who were eligible for a Free and Appropriate Education (FAPE) under New York State law participated in the study. Participants were administered Ekman\u27s facial discrimination task (1976), the Sociomoral Reflection Measure-Short Form (SRM-SF; Gibbs, Basinger, &Fuller, 1992), and an Emotional Intelligence Survey (Schutte et al., 1998). Results showed the incarcerated youth were less accurate in identifying emotions from facial expressions than were non-incarcerated young adults. Further, incarcerated youth with identified learning disabilities were even less accurate in their ability to recognize emotions than those juvenile offenders without a learning disability. Racial differences in emotional recognition were observed as well. Correlational analysis revealed that social perspective taking was related to the recognition of some of the emotions, as was emotional intelligence