Assessing the Recognition of Social Interactions Through Body Motion in the Routine Care of Patients with Post-Lingual Sensorineural Hearing Loss.

Background: Body motion significantly contributes to understanding communicative and social interactions, especially when auditory information is impaired. The visual skills of people with hearing loss are often enhanced and compensate for some of the missing auditory information. In the present study, we investigated the recognition of social interactions by observing body motion in people with post-lingual sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Methods: In total, 38 participants with post-lingual SNHL and 38 matched normally hearing individuals (NHIs) were presented with point-light stimuli of two agents who were either engaged in a communicative interaction or acting independently. They were asked to classify the actions as communicative vs. independent and to select the correct action description. Results: No significant differences were found between the participants with SNHL and the NHIs when classifying the actions. However, the participants with SNHL showed significantly lower performance compared with the NHIs in the description task due to a higher tendency to misinterpret communicative stimuli. In addition, acquired SNHL was associated with a significantly higher number of errors, with a tendency to over-interpret independent stimuli as communicative and to misinterpret communicative actions. Conclusions: The findings of this study suggest a misinterpretation of visual understanding of social interactions in individuals with SNHL and over-interpretation of communicative intentions in SNHL acquired later in life.