Certain types of emojis are harder for some TBI survivors to interpret than others, new research finds.
Researchers find that emojis relating to ‘social emotions’ are harder for some traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivors to accurately label than emojis for ‘basic emotions’.
The researchers compared the accurate labelling of both basic human faces, and emojis depicting emotions, between moderate to severe TBI survivors and ‘neurotypical peers’ (i.e. people who did not have a TBI). The emojis were categorised into ‘social emotions’ (embarrassed, remorseful, anxious, neutral, flirting, confident, proud), and ‘basic emotions’ (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, neutral, surprise, happy’).
The researchers found that both TBI survivors and their neurotypical peers performed worse when labelling emotions depicted by emojis than by basic faces. When comparing emoji type, TBI survivors performed worse labelling social emotions depicted by emojis than basic emotions depicted by emojis.
The results have implications for our understanding of functional communication and social participation after brain injury, conclude the researchers.
For more information, visit www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699052.2023.2181401.
Reference: Clough, S., Morrow, E., Mutlu, B., Turkstra, L., & Duff, M.C. (2023). Emotion recognition of faces and emoji in individuals with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury. Brain Injury. DOI: doi.org/10.1080/02699052.2023.2181401.
Back