ECREA16-Abstract

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Saturday, November 12

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ICS08

The Effect of Relations in Communicational Practices

PP 716

Emotion Perception from Recorded Stimuli by Children with Hearing Impairment

T. Waaramaa

, T. Kukkonen

University of Tampere, School of Communication- Media and Theatre, Tampere, Finland

University of Tampere, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Tampere, Finland

Exceptions in social interaction norms are easily recognized. One exception can be inability to recognize vocal non-verbal communication due to hearing

impairment. Childhood plays an important role in learning social interaction, however, a child cannot produce emotional vocal expressions if s/he does

not hear them first. Hearing impairment may disturb normal development of emotional life, e.g. expressing and perceiving emotions, understanding

humor and double meanings which are conveyed by changing the color of the voice, i.e. voice quality. Also development of speech may result sounding

monotonous. There is a threat of a withdrawal and exclusion from social situations of a child with hearing impairment. Therefore, it is important to learn

early enough to recognize vocal emotional expressions. Hearing aids and cochlear implants (CI) are designed to distinguish mainly between words, not

vocal nuances. Thus, the present study concentrated on vocal emotion identification by children using CIs. The participants of the present study were 9–17

year-old children (N = 21; 10 males, 11 females) using CIs. They came singularly in a listening test which was conducted in a soundproof studio at Tampere

University Hospital. First, they completed a questionnaire with background information. Then, they listened to the stimuli (N = 32) which consisted of non‑

sense sentences and prolonged vowels /a:/, /i:/ and /u:/ expressing excitement, anger, contentment and fear. These emotions were chosen since they were

thought to represent everyday-life emotions and hence, they would be easily recognized. The samples were produced by professional actors and student

actors. At the test, the participants were faced to three loudspeakers and they answered orally to the researchers which emotion from the four options

they perceived. The answers and the questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS program. The study answers ethical requirements. The results showed that

the children’s chronological age did not correlate with emotion identification, however, the age of implantation correlated statistically significantly with

the identification (p = 0.02). No gender differences were found. Contentment was best conveyed by nonsense sentences. Fear and anger were best con‑

veyed by vowel /a:/, and excitement by vowel /u:/. Anger was the best recognized emotion of the four emotions expressed and it was most often chosen for

an answer. Excitement was most seldom chosen for an answer. Fear was frequently confused with contentment, obviously due to their similar arousal level

(i.e. low, on an axis low–moderate – high, measured by dBs). It was concluded that CIs do not give a sufficient support for recognizing nuances conveyed by

voice quality. When linguistic content of the speech is eliminated children with hearing impairment have difficulties to perceive the non-linguistic content

of vocal expressions. Mainly they seem to rely on arousal level which may be a crucial mistake if they confuse e.g. fear and contentment, as it was shown in

the present study. Thus, co-operation with the audiologists needs to be strengthened in order to re-design the CIs to support normal social and emotional

development of children with hearing impairment.

PP 717

Expressing Homosexuality in Public – The Influence of Negative Events and Public Opinion on Showing Homosexual Orientation

Among Gay and Bisexual Men in European Countries

R. Lemke

, S. Merz

, T. Tornow

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Department of Communication, Mainz, Germany

While heterosexual people show their sexual or romantic attraction to each other in public by holding hands or kissing, sexual minorities might tend to

hide this behavior depending on the society’s acceptance of homosexuality. This study investigates the expression of homosexuality in public environments

in European countries. Theories of public behavior postulate an individual’s strive for conformity. This is especially true for the spiral of silence-theory by

Noelle-Neumann (1974; 1984) as well as for the dramaturgical approach by Goffman (1959; 1963), which has been broadly extended into the sphere

of sexual prejudice by Herek (2009). Both theories assume that individuals have a perception of the public opinion and that this perception guides their

public behavior. One source of information about society’s views are negative events guided by public opinion or stigmatization. When it comes to gay and

bisexual men, negative events can be acts of physical or verbal abuse as well as insulting jokes related to sexual orientation.Thus, we hypothesize that more

encounters with physical or verbal abuse as well as overhearing heterosexist jokes are associated with a higher tendency to hide same-sex sexual attraction

in public (H1). However, theorists postulate that perception of public opinion is not solely based on manifest experiences like negative events. It is assumed

that individuals have a feeling for latent opinions in a society. Herek (2009) introduces the idea of“felt stigma”among sexual minorities not based on man‑

ifest experiences with negative events but on the more subtle processes in a society that negatively affect members of these minority groups. Therefore we

hypothesize that the more gay and bisexual men perceive their society as anti-gay, the higher their tendency to hide same-sex sexual attraction in public

spaces (H2). It can further be hypothesized that this effect is partly independent from the effect proposed in H1 (H2b). Hypotheses were tested based on

the European sub-sample of gay and bisexual men who participated in the 2015 global Gay Happiness Monitor survey (N=86,420 men from 49 West and

Eastern European countries built the basis of the analysis). In a first step, after controlling for socio-demographics (ΔR2=.07), we found that manifest

experiences with physical or verbal abuse (β=.09, p<.01) and overhearing negative gay-related jokes in everyday life (β=-.14, p<.01) were significant

predictors in a regression model (ΔR2=.10) with willingness to express homosexuality in public as dependent variable (3 items: e.g. ‘holding hands with

another man in public’). However, the direction of associations only partly supported H1. In a second step, perceived gay-related public opinion (6 items by

Herek & Glunt, 1995: e.g.‘Most people around me would willingly accept a gay/bisexual man as a close friend’) was entered into the model (β=.47, p<.01).

This variable added further – and in the final model the highest – explanation to the willingness to express homosexuality in public (ΔR2=.19; total adj.

R2=.35), supporting H2 and H2b. Findings are discussed regarding the power of public opinion as well as theoretical implications regarding sexual minority

stress and the theory of public opinion.