The study attempted to determine whether deaf individuals could more accurately identify facial expressions than normal individuals. The 30 adult (mean age: 18 years) deaf subjects were asked to identify emotional states of photographed actors. Results generally indicated that deaf individuals are neither better nor worse at identifying emotional expressions than normal speaking and hearing individuals, though the six profoundly deaf subjects did score significantly lower than both partially deaf and normal hearers. There were no significant differences between scores of male and female deaf subjects. Deaf subjects, however, scored much lower than hearing subjects in identifying the emotion of disgust, often confusing it with the emotions of anger and sadness, a finding possibly explained by the nature of the sign language gesture for disgust. (DB)