Features of the perception and understanding of emoji by adolescents with different levels of intelligence

The present study aims at the comparative analysis of the patterns of the identification of images that reflect basic and complex emotions by adolescents with mild intellectual disturbances and by normatively developing peers. The research involved two groups of adolescents. Author's technique was developed and further applied, containing seven multiple choice tasks to study the non-verbal information perception patterns in adolescents with mild intellectual disturbances. It was determined that during saccadic eye movements, all adolescents, regardless of the level of intellectual development, better define such emotions as “joy” and “fear”. For normatively developing adolescents, the zone of interest corresponds to the mouth area as the most moving part of the face, while peers with mild intellectual disturbances take longer to examine the eye area, which is inherent in children in the early stages of ontogenesis. Data indicate that normatively developing adolescents can combine individual image elements into a single whole, while adolescents with intellectual disabilities, lingering on individual image elements, are incapable of creating a single image of it.