[Acoustic recognition of emotions and musical perceptive abilities in young deaf person]

What influence does being deaf have on the ability to recognise emotions in other people? What perceptive abilities can be found in deaf people that are based on the acoustic recognition of emotions? Studies concerning the most useful acoustic clues in the recognition of emotions remain scarce. Beyond the uttered words, emotions are perceptible through the music of speech i.e. its words, its parameters (namely the intensity), the pitch and the timbre or colour of a sound, as well as its rhythm. The protocol of assessment developed in this study shows evidence of a correlation between the recognition of fundamental emotions and the perceptive musical abilities of deaf patients. This concept is relevant when regarding any deaf patient; irrespective of hearing aid type or re-education method.