The Understanding of Emotional and Social Attributions in Deaf Adolescents
Titel:
The Understanding of Emotional and Social Attributions in Deaf Adolescents
Auteur:
Kusche, Carol A. Garfield, Tracy S. Greenberg, Mark T.
Verschenen in:
Journal of clinical child and adolescent psychology
Paginering:
Jaargang 12 (1983) nr. 2 pagina's 153-160
Jaar:
1983
Inhoud:
The present study examined deaf adolescents' understanding of causes and emotions using an attributional model. Subjects consisted of 137profoundly deaf high school students (mean age = 17.2 years) who were tested in Simultaneous Communication for their understanding of causal concepts, emotion concepts, and perceived cause-affect associations. No significant differences were found for age and only one significant difference was found for sex. However, all of the comparisons involving language achievement level were highly significant, with the higher deaf students consistently scoring better than the lower subjects. Data obtained from a former study of 188 hearing children from two developmental levels (mean ages = 6.4, 10.4 years) were included for purposes of comparison. The deaf students evidenced a similar affective understanding to that of the younger (first-grade) level. The results indicate that language plays an important role in the understanding of causal ascriptions, emotion concepts, and cause-affect associations and provide support for the hypothesis that early language deprivation may result in delayed emotional and social development.