Institute of Psychology, University of Wroclaw, ul. Dawida 1, 50-527, Wrocław, Poland.
Taste and Smell Clinic, Technische Universitat Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Arch Sex Behav. 2021 Nov;50(8):3799-3808. doi: 10.1007/s10508-021-02016-6. Epub 2021 Oct 12.
Social perception is a multimodal process involving vision and audition as central input sources for human social cognitive processes. However, it remains unclear how profoundly deaf people assess others in the context of mating and social interaction. The current study explored the relative importance of different sensory modalities (vision, smell, and touch) in assessments of opposite- and same-sex strangers. We focused on potential sensory compensation processes in mate selection (i.e., increased importance of the intact senses in forming impressions of an opposite-sex stranger as a potential partner). A total of 74 deaf individuals and 100 normally hearing controls were included in the study sample. We found diminished importance of vision and smell in deaf participants compared with controls for opposite- and same-sex strangers, and increased importance of touch for the assessment of same-sex strangers. The results suggested that deaf people rely less on visual and olfactory cues in mating and social assessments, highlighting a possible role of sign language in shaping interpersonal tactile experience in non-romantic relationships.
社会感知是一个多模态的过程，涉及视觉和听觉，作为人类社会认知过程的核心输入源。然而，目前尚不清楚失聪人士在交配和社交互动的背景下如何评估他人。本研究探讨了不同感觉模态（视觉、嗅觉和触觉）在评估异性和同性陌生人时的相对重要性。我们关注的是伴侣选择中的潜在感觉补偿过程（即，在形成对异性陌生人作为潜在伴侣的印象时，完整感觉的重要性增加）。共有 74 名失聪个体和 100 名正常听力对照组被纳入研究样本。我们发现，与对照组相比，失聪参与者对异性和同性陌生人的视觉和嗅觉的重要性降低，对同性陌生人的触觉评估的重要性增加。研究结果表明，失聪人士在交配和社会评估中较少依赖视觉和嗅觉线索，这突出了手语在塑造非浪漫关系中的人际触觉体验方面的可能作用。
