Denmark Tanya, Atkinson Joanna, Campbell Ruth, Swettenham John
Division of Psychology and Language Science, Department of Developmental Science, University College London, London, UK,
J Autism Dev Disord. 2014 Oct;44(10):2584-92. doi: 10.1007/s10803-014-2130-x.
Facial expressions in sign language carry a variety of communicative features. While emotion can modulate a spoken utterance through changes in intonation, duration and intensity, in sign language specific facial expressions presented concurrently with a manual sign perform this function. When deaf adult signers cannot see facial features, their ability to judge emotion in a signed utterance is impaired (Reilly et al. in Sign Lang Stud 75:113-118, 1992). We examined the role of the face in the comprehension of emotion in sign language in a group of typically developing (TD) deaf children and in a group of deaf children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We replicated Reilly et al.'s (Sign Lang Stud 75:113-118, 1992) adult results in the TD deaf signing children, confirming the importance of the face in understanding emotion in sign language. The ASD group performed more poorly on the emotion recognition task than the TD children. The deaf children with ASD showed a deficit in emotion recognition during sign language processing analogous to the deficit in vocal emotion recognition that has been observed in hearing children with ASD.
手语中的面部表情具有多种交际功能。在口语中，情感可以通过语调、时长和强度的变化来调节话语表达，而在手语中，与手部动作同时呈现的特定面部表情则起到这一作用。当成年聋人手语使用者无法看到面部特征时，他们判断手语话语中情感的能力就会受损（赖利等人，《手语研究》第75卷：第113 - 118页，1992年）。我们研究了面部表情在一组发育正常的（TD）聋童和一组患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的聋童对手语情感理解中的作用。我们在TD聋人手语儿童中重现了赖利等人（《手语研究》第75卷：第113 - 118页，1992年）针对成年人的研究结果，证实了面部表情在理解手语情感中的重要性。ASD组在情感识别任务中的表现比TD组儿童更差。患有ASD的聋童在手语处理过程中的情感识别存在缺陷，这与在患有ASD的听力儿童中观察到的语音情感识别缺陷类似。
