Language acquisition and emotional comprehension in children with deafness

Most children with deafness born to hearing parents have language and communication impairments, as a result of a possible limited access to language and to an impoverished conversational environment. These linguistic and communicative difficulties, which may exist despite the use of hearing aids, can affect various developmental aspects of children with deafness. In particular, these difficulties may negatively affect their ability to understand their own and others' emotions, and consequently, their social functioning, their well-being and their academic success. Thus, this paper focuses on trying to explain how the different characteristics of deafness and environment, as well as the interaction between the two, can lead to deficiencies in linguistic and conversational input that affect children’s language and communication skills. At the same time, we aim to show how deficiencies in these linguistic skills can lead to difficulties in different aspects of deaf children’s emotional comprehension, which can extend into adulthood. In addition, we review some research that provides relevant ideas on how to improve deaf children’s emotional understanding, which focuses mainly on the use of conversational strategies to help children understand people’s emotions in different situations. Keywords: emoti