Language and Hidden Emotion Understanding in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children: The Role of Mentalistic Verbs.

The understanding of hidden emotions-situations in which individuals deliberately express an emotion different from what they genuinely feel-is a key skill in theory of mind (ToM) development. This ability allows children to reason about discrepancies between internal emotional states and external expressions and is closely tied to linguistic development, particularly vocabulary related to mental states, which supports complex emotional reasoning. Children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH), especially those born to hearing non-signing families and raised in oral language environments, may face challenges in early language exposure.