Hearing Impairment, Resilience and Emotional Processing Styles

Abstract

Life style and physical impairment may mutually determine psychodynamic development of an individual. Courage and social interest, or the lack of them determines whether having a hearing impairment permits a good adjustment or lead to permanent failure of the individual. Resilience refers to the time taken to get back to normalcy after a set-back, reaction to negative events, perception of the effects of past negative events, reaction to risk factors in life, defining problems, confidence in coping with future, and openness to experience and flexibility. Emotional processing is a process whereby emotional disturbances are absorbed, and decline to the extent that other experiences and behaviour can proceed without disruption. The present study examines the emotional processing styles adopted by the hearing impaired and the resilient individuals. A purposive sample of 80 hearing impaired and 89 non-impaired adolescents were taken in the investigation. The sample was drawn from two Government schools situated in Thrissur, Kerala. Bharathiar University Resilience Scale and The Emotional Processing Scale were used. ANOVA revealed that the Hearing impaired group uses Suppression, Unregulated emotions and impoverished emotional experience to a significantly greater extent than the non-impaired group. The high resilience group uses Impoverished Emotional Experience to a significantly lesser extent than the low resilience group in their processing of emotion. Hearing impairment and resilience do not interact to have an effect on emotional processing style. It is likely that typical styles of emotional processing may be associated with hearing impairment and resilience.