Understanding Pretend Emotions in Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) and born to hearing parents have delays in their social-cognitive development and in particular in their theory of mind (ToM). These delays are often attributed to the difficulties they encounter in acquiring age-appropriate linguistic and communicative skills. The present study asks whether this developmental delay extends to problems with understanding pretend emotions and if linguistic difficulties are related to this area. A total of 173 children (82 DHH and 91 hearing) between 3 and 8 years of age received a set of emotion and language measures. Results showed that children who are DHH were delayed in understanding pretend emotions, and this was strongly related to their difficulties with expressive vocabulary and pragmatics. In summary, children who are DHH and have experienced reduced access to language and communicative interaction have a restricted understanding of the communicative intentions of emotional expressions. These delays may have implications for their social relationships with surrounding family and other children

The role of motion and intensity in deaf children’s recognition of real human facial expressions of emotion

© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.There is substantial evidence to suggest that deafness is associated with delays in emotion understanding, which has been attributed to delays in language acquisition and opportunities to converse. However, studies addressing the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotion have produced equivocal findings. The two experiments presented here attempt to clarify emotion recognition in deaf children by considering two aspects: the role of motion and the role of intensity in deaf children’s emotion recognition. In Study 1, 26 deaf children were compared to 26 age-matched hearing controls on a computerised facial emotion recognition task involving static and dynamic expressions of 6 emotions. Eighteen of the deaf and 18 age-matched hearing controls additionally took part in Study 2, involving the presentation of the same 6 emotions at varying intensities. Study 1 showed that deaf children’s emotion recognition was better in the dynamic rather than static condition, whereas the hearing children showed no difference in performance between the two conditions. In Study 2, the deaf children performed no differently from the hearing controls, showing improved recognition rates with increasing rates of intensity. With the exception of disgust, no differences in individual emotions were found. These findings highlight the importance of using ecologically valid stimuli to assess emotion recognition.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Elaboració d'una guia sobre aprenentatge cooperatiu a la Universitat de Girona

L’any 2009, l’Institut de Ciències de l’Educació Josep Pallach de la Universitat de Girona va impulsar la creació de diverses Xarxes d’Innovació Docent (XID). Aquestes xarxes agrupen professors de disciplines diverses que volen compartir experiències relatives a la millora docent. Una d’aquestes xarxes és la relativa a l’Aprenentatge Cooperatiu (XIDAC). Es compon de vuit professors que utilitzen aquest mètode d’aprenentatge a la seva docència. Un dels seus objectius és produir una guia o petit manual sobre aprenentatge cooperatiu (AC) a la UdG. Es tracta d’orientar els professors que vulguin posar- lo en pràctica, o que ja ho estiguin fent i necessitin un material de suport. A la present comunicació es descriu el procés d’elaboració d’aquesta guia. En primer lloc, s’exposen característiques de la UdG que poden determinarne en algun sentit el perfil i continguts. Després, es resumeixen els resultats d’entrevistes amb professors que apliquen l’AC tot i no pertànyer a la Xarxa. A continuació, es resumeixen els resultats d’una enquesta elaborada al professorat de la UdG (actualment està en fase de resposta). Amb posterioritat, es fa una presentació general de la futura guia i es descriu breument un exemple de fitxa d’activitat d’AC. Finalment, es fa referència al procés de debat obert de part d’aquests continguts a través d’una pàgina web, per tal de recollir punts de vista externs i millorar la proposta.Peer Reviewe

Children’s understanding of pretend emotions

This preliminary study aims to investigate children’s ability to understand that the emotional expressions that occur in pretend play do not necessarily coincide with the emotions people feel inside. Previous research has found that children aged 4 and 6 have difficulty to distinguish between the external and the internal emotion of a character who pretends an emotion. In the present work, thirteen 4-year-olds and eight 6-year-olds were administered stories in which a character simulated an emotion. Differently from previous research, the questions addressed to the children did not focus on the distinction external/internal emotion but on the distinction between real/pretend emotion. Furthermore, since previous research has suggested that children may understand better selfpretence than pretence of others, the participants in our study were engaged in a pretence situation where they had to pretend to be happy. The results obtained showed that, contrary to previous research, most 4- and 6-year-olds realize that pretend emotions may not be real, and this was true both for self-pretence and for the pretence of others

Facilitar la teoría de la mente en niños con alteraciones del lenguaje

The ability to recognize mental states in oneself and others, or the theory of mind, has been a widely studied topic in last years. Traditionally, these studies have focused on the understanding of false belief, one of the most important milestones in its development. Studies conducted with children with language difficulties suggest that they have a delay in false belief acquisition. On the other hand, numerous studies have established a relationship between the understanding of false belief and language skills. In particular, it has been suggested that training based in labelling objects with double perspective facilitates the understanding of false belief. The aim of the present study is to test the effect of the structuration level of labelling training in a group of children with difficulties in language development. A total of 14 children, aged between 58 and 107 months, were trained in 3 sessions, and a pre-test and a post-test were administered to evaluate the effects of the training. The results confirm a delay in false belief understanding in children with developmental language difficulties, and suggest that the structured labelling training is effective to improve this understandingLa habilidad para reconocer los estados mentales propios y ajenos, o teoría de la mente, ha sido un tema ampliamente estudiado en los últimos años. Tradicionalmente, los estudios sobre teoría de la mente se han centrado en la comprensión de la falsa creencia, uno de los hitos más importantes en su desarrollo. Los estudios con niños con dificultades lingüísticas sugieren que estos experimentan un desarrollo tardío de esta comprensión. Por otro lado, numerosos estudios establecen una relación entre las habilidades lingüísticas y la comprensión de la falsa creencia. En particular, se ha sugerido que el entrenamiento en denominación con objetos engañosos facilita esta comprensión. El objetivo del presente trabajo consiste en probar el efecto del grado de estructuración del entrenamiento en denominación en un grupo de niños con dificultades en el desarrollo del lenguaje. Un total de 14 niños, con edades comprendidas entre los 58 y los 107 meses, fueron entrenados en 3 sesiones y evaluados en un pre-test y un post-test para analizar los efectos del entrenamiento. Los resultados corroboran una comprensión tardía de la falsa creencia, y sugieren que el entrenamiento en denominación estructurada es eficaz para mejorar esta comprensión en niños con dificultades en el desarrollo lingüístico

Elaboració d'una guia sobre aprenentatge cooperatiu a la Universitat de Girona

L’any 2009, l’Institut de Ciències de l’Educació Josep Pallach de la Universitat de Girona va impulsar la creació de diverses Xarxes d’Innovació Docent (XID). Aquestes xarxes agrupen professors de disciplines diverses que volen compartir experiències relatives a la millora docent. Una d’aquestes xarxes és la relativa a l’Aprenentatge Cooperatiu (XIDAC). Es compon de vuit professors que utilitzen aquest mètode d’aprenentatge a la seva docència. Un dels seus objectius és produir una guia o petit manual sobre aprenentatge cooperatiu (AC) a la UdG. Es tracta d’orientar els professors que vulguin posar- lo en pràctica, o que ja ho estiguin fent i necessitin un material de suport. A la present comunicació es descriu el procés d’elaboració d’aquesta guia. En primer lloc, s’exposen característiques de la UdG que poden determinarne en algun sentit el perfil i continguts. Després, es resumeixen els resultats d’entrevistes amb professors que apliquen l’AC tot i no pertànyer a la Xarxa. A continuació, es resumeixen els resultats d’una enquesta elaborada al professorat de la UdG (actualment està en fase de resposta). Amb posterioritat, es fa una presentació general de la futura guia i es descriu breument un exemple de fitxa d’activitat d’AC. Finalment, es fa referència al procés de debat obert de part d’aquests continguts a través d’una pàgina web, per tal de recollir punts de vista externs i millorar la proposta.Peer Reviewe