Posture as a stimulus for emotion decoding: Comparing deaf and hearing subjects

The ability to decode emotion through the isolated channel of body posture was tested in profoundly, prelingually deaf and hearing university students, aged 18--30. Fifty pairs of subjects were matched based on sex, age, and nonverbal intelligence as measured by the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI-2). Five hypotheses were tested: (1) Is posture sufficient to convey emotion for hearing subjects? (2) Is posture sufficient to convey emotion for deaf subjects? (3) Is the accuracy level for postural emotion decoding lower in deaf than in hearing subjects? (4) Is postural emotion decoding tapping into some mental ability beyond nonverbal intelligence and visual discrimination in hearing subjects? (5) Is postural emotion decoding tapping into some mental ability beyond nonverbal intelligence and visual discrimination in deaf subjects? Results indicate that for both deaf and hearing individuals the isolated channel of posture is sufficient to convey emotion. Deaf subjects were not found to be less accurate emotion decoders than were hearing subjects. Nonverbal intelligence scores and visual discrimination scores were not found to be significantly correlated with emotion decoding accuracy.