Perception and Interpretation of Nonverbally Expressed Emotions by Adolescents with Learning Disabilities

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Abstract
The perception and interpretation by 17 learning disabled and 17 achieving adolescents of a young female's video taped nonverbal expressions of anger, embarrassment, fear, frustration, joy, and love were compared. Learning disabled adolescents misinterpreted the emotions significantly more frequently than achieving controls. Substitution patterns also differed in quality. The number of correct interpretations of emotions correlated significantly and positively with scaled scores on the Block Design and Object Assembly subtests of the WISC or WAIS and converted scores on the Design subtest of the Detroit Tests of Learning Aptitude. It was concluded that adolescents with learning disabilities exhibited quantitative and qualitative reductions in the recognition of affective cues which related to visual-motor organization ability.