Do Polish sign language learners have increased facial emotional recognition skills

Facial expressions are seen as a part of the grammatical structures in sign languages used by Deaf communities. The understanding of visual-spatial language requires good face processing skills. According to the previous studies, users of sign language: Deaf and hearing children of Deaf adults (CODA) have increased facial recognition skills in performing non-linguistic tasks. In this paper authors investigate the effects from Polish Sign Language learning as a second language in hearing students group on discriminating human face emotions. In the experiment the participants were divided into two groups: Polish Sign Language learners (N=13) and English learners (N=13). There were no meaningful difference between the accuracy in Scale of Emotional Intelligence (Faces) of the two groups. The results suggest that a short period of time of visual-spatial language learning (one semester) may not be enough for increasing facial emotional processing skills.