Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-1997

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Counseling

Major Professor

James H. Miller

Committee Members

John R. Ray, William E. Woodrick, Robert L. Williams

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to ascertain some of the possible effects that communicating visually has on the perception of the behaviors of others. It is feasible that the lack of ability to hear causes compensation in the visual abilities of humans to detect and understand non-verbal behavior. Studies have shown that when people lie there are hints in their non-verbal behavior that suggests that they are not being truthful. Being Deaf could possibly increase the ability of people to more accurately detect lies than hearing individuals. Data were collected on 42 deaf undergraduate psychology students from Gallaudet University. Their ability to detect lies was measured by a deception detection test created by Dr. Paul Ekman from the Hiaman Interaction Laboratory in the Psychiatry Department at the University of California, San Francisco and Dr. Mark Frank from Rutgers University in 1992. All of the subjects were given a questionnaire asking them to rate their ability to detect lies. The results of the deaf subjects were compared against the results of the hearing subjects obtained in a study by Ekman and Frank (in press).

Counter to what was hypothesized, the results showed that on average the hearing subjects were significantly better than the deaf subjects on the deception detection It was hypothesized that the female deaf subjects would do better than male deaf subjects on the test, was no significant difference between the two groups, also hypothesized that on average the deaf subjects would be more confident about their lie detection skills than the measure. There It was hearing subjects on the three pretest measures and the one posttest measure. The results supported this hypothesis in that deaf subjects, when compared to the hearing subjects, on average were significantly more confident on the two pretest measures that rated their ability to conceal their emotions and to detect lies from others' actions. Between the groups there was no significant difference on either the pretest rating examining their general ability to detect lies or the posttest confidence rating on how well they thought they did. Finally, it was hypothesized that there would be a relationship between the deaf subjects' confidence ratings on their abilities to detect lies on the pretest and posttest measures when compared to their results. There was no significant relationship when the ratings where compared to the results within the group of deaf subjects.

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