Expression of primary emotions and defence and protective reactions among deaf adolescents

The study examined the differences in defense, protective reactions, and expression of primary emotions between deaf or partially hearing impaired adolescents and their peers with normal hearing. Participants in the two groups were assessed by means of The Profile Emotions, The Life Style Index, and Non-verbal Scale of Suffering. Deaf adolescents tended more towards uncontrolled and oppositional behaviour, and had a weaker sense of self-protection and deprivation. Moreover, their defense mechanisms (intellectualization, projection and negation) were more intensively expressed. A higher level of defense mechanisms of intellectualization was observed in hearing adolescents. On the basis of the obtained results and analyses we may conclude that deaf adolescents demonstrated some characteristics of lower level of adjustment: negative emotional responses, lower degree of control (more uncontrolled and oppositional behaviour, weakened sense of self-protection) and several simple, evolutionary more primitive defense mechanisms (excluding intellectualization). Our interpretation also takes into account that adolescents need to develop a new adjustment system as the old one ceased to function.