• 1 January 1985
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 89  (5) , 537-545
Abstract
Nonretarded, TMR [trainable mentally retarded], and EMR [educable mentally retarded] individuals matched on MA [mental age] attempted to identify the emotional states (happy, angry, sad or fearful) of tape-recorded voices speaking in an unfamiliar language by pointing to 1 of 4 stick-figure depictions of the emotions. Although analyses indicated that TMR subjects were less accurate overall than were EMR and nonretarded subjects, all 3 groups were able to identify each of the emotions well above chance expectation. Of the 4 emotions, fear was judged least accurately by each group. Correlational analyses revealed that accuracy in decoding emotional passages was positively related to IQ and CA [chronological age]. The experimental and correlational findings indicated few important differences in patterns of emotion identification among the groups and were consistent with results obtained in other studies of nonverbal decoding by nonretarded individuals.