Enhancing Emotional Understanding: Modalities of Emotion Perception in Cochlear-Implanted Children

OBJECTIVES: The study investigates the emotion perception abilities of Mandarin-speaking preschool children with cochlear implants (CI) compared with their normal-hearing peers. It examines their proficiency across three sensory modalities: auditory-only, visual-only, and audiovisual. The objective is to understand the role of these modalities in aiding emotional recognition for CI users. DESIGN: The research involved 40 preschool children aged 3 to 6 years, divided evenly into normal-hearing and CI groups. Using a controlled experimental setup, the children were evaluated on their ability to recognize basic emotions (happiness, anger, sadness, surprise) through auditory, visual, and combined cues. RESULTS: The findings revealed that CI children face considerable challenges in perceiving emotions through auditory cues alone, while their performance significantly improved when visual information was incorporated. This underscores the critical compensatory role that visual cues play in aiding emotional perception for CI users. CONCLUSIONS: The study highlights the importance of multisensory approaches in education and therapy for children with CIs. The benefits of visual and audiovisual integration suggest potential strategies to enhance emotional and social communication skills in this population. Future research should address the limitations, such as sample size and diversity, to further explore cross-modal emotion perception in cochlear-implanted children.