Week 8 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION, CHARACTERISTICS OF

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Nonverbal Communication

What is Nonverbal Communication?

- Nonverbal communication is generally defined as the aspect of communication that is not
expressed in words. Under the assumptions that ‘one cannot not communicate’ and that all
movements are to some degree expressive), all nonverbal behaviors are subsumed under this
heading.
- As this definition suggests, nonverbal communication encompasses a wide range of
behaviors, some of which may not even be considered as behaviors by all. Thus, next to
such more obvious nonverbal behaviors as facial, vocal and postural expressions,
touch, proxemics and gaze, we can also list physical attractiveness, facial morphology, as
well as such behavioral choices as hair style, clothing, and adornment or more generally
appearance. Some researchers have even included material objects, which serve
communicative functions within a society under this heading (e.g., a parlor organ, Ames,
1980).
- The scientific study of nonverbal behavior is usually traced to Darwin’s seminal work On
the Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animal (1872/1965). Darwin’s basic message
was that emotion expressions are evolved and (at least at some point in the past) adaptive
and he described animal and human emotionally expressive behaviors in order to support
this point. Other early important work in the field came from anthropology with work on
kinesics, the study of body movement (Birdwhistell, 1970), and proxemics (the study of
personal space, Hall, 1963). Important early overview articles were written in the early
second half of the twentieth century (Duncan Jr, 1969; Miller et al., 1959; Wiener et al.,
1972) and in 1972 a classic edited book was published by Hinde (1972) with chapters
ranging from the communication in lower vertebrates and invertebrates (Thorpe, 1972) to
cultural influences on nonverbal communication in humans (Leach, 1972).
- In fact, nonverbal communication is inherently multidisciplinary and has been of interest to
a variety of fields including, next to psychology and linguistics, also medicine, sociology,
anthropology, ethology, and law to name just a few. As such, a wide range of studies have
accumulated a rich body of literature. Research on nonverbal communication has addressed
both the communication of states in humans and animals – most often emotions – and the
communication of states. The latter goes with regard to the expressive features that
characterize certain states – for example, “the loud voice of extraversion” (Scherer, 1978)
and with regard to first impressions in humans. It is, however, the case that by and large,
especially with regard to humans, this literature is heavily biased toward the study of facial
expressions, and in particular facial expressions of emotions. Other research is devoted
to paralinguistic aspects such as voice quality and gestures, and more recently gaze has
attracted attention again. The other aspects of nonverbal communication, however, have
been relatively neglected.
- In the present context, I will, therefore, emphasize research on facial expressions of
emotions in humans. In what follows I will first briefly describe how facial expressions are
measured, before turning to models of nonverbal behavior and then research on the meaning
of facial expressions. In this context, I will allude to newer research on the importance of
 gaze as well as briefly mention research on the dyadic synchronization of nonverbal
behavior. The final section will be devoted to the role of nonverbal behavior in first
impressions.

M. Anderson, in Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Second Edition), 2006

Webs of Verbal, Nonverbal, Vocal, and Nonvocal Communication

- Nonverbal communication without obligatory ties to language is by far the most diverse
category, and may be vocal, involving sounds originating in the vocal tract, or nonvocal.
Nonvocal signs in turn may draw on sound production and interpretation, as in whistles and
clapping, or may involve any other sense modality – such as vision, olfaction, taste, and
touch, with vision paramount, whether through gesture, dress styles, or architecture.
- Another foundational distinction made in nonverbal communication centers on context,
especially whether face-to-face, more generally interpersonal, or between more remote
actors (Goffman, 1963). Contemporary media have introduced many innovations for
nonverbal communication. Cell-phone use is verbal, leading to some ordinary nonverbal
signs accompanying speech being masked by the medium while others are exaggerated.
Emailing represents the verbal both nonverbally and nonvocally, in writing; yet further
nonvocal and vocal nonverbal expression seeps in through emoticons and yet-to-be
standardized strings of icons, indexes, and symbols.
- Finally, sign languages for the deaf, such as American Sign Language (ASL), are
quintessentially both nonverbal and nonvocal communication (Armstrong et al., 1995).
These constitute, however, genuine languages with full syntactic and productive properties,
which cannot be said for so-called body language (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, [1967] 1975) or for the
communication systems of other animals (Rauch and Carr, 1980).
- Semiotic research on nonverbal communication by linguists, anthropologists, cognitive
psychologists, and others ranges from the experimental (often quantitative, considering
individual, internal, and microunits of analysis) to the naturalistic (usually qualitative,
assessing social, relational, embodied, and emergent units of analysis) (Schere and Ekman,
1982; Poyatos, 1992).

Nonverbal Communication☆
M.L. Patterson, in Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology, 2017
Summary
- Nonverbal communication is pervasive in both face-to-face and mediated communication.
Because much of nonverbal communication operates automatically and often outside of
awareness, it provides an efficient means of regulating our social contacts with others. The
determinants of biology, culture, gender, personality, and the environment shape stable
patterns of nonverbal communication. Nevertheless, the flexibility and utility of nonverbal
communication are evident in several distinct functions, including providing information,
regulating interaction, expressing intimacy, exercising influence, and managing impressions.
Thus, the complementary behavioral and social judgment tracks of nonverbal
communication constitute an indispensable system for navigating our social worlds.

Face and Body in Motion

Introduction
- Nonverbal communication, the communication of information through channels other than
the written or spoken word, involves a vast array of behavior.
- Nonverbal cues include visual cues such as facial expressions (typically involving
expressions of emotions), eye gaze and eye movements, head movements, gestures and body
movement, posture, and gait.
- Other visual nonverbal cues include hairstyle, facial hair, use of cosmetics, grooming, and
dress. Auditory nonverbal cues include tone of voice, pitch, speed and pace of speech, and
volume. Nonverbal communication can also occur through touch and through olfactory
cues.
- While a specific nonverbal cue, such as a wink, a nod, or a ‘thumbs-up’ gesture, can
sometimes have an important and clear communicative function, nonverbal communication
is fantastically complex, with multiple nonverbal cues, both visual and auditory, occurring
simultaneously.

Social Psychology of Nonverbal Communication

- Nonverbal communication refers to the ways in which beings convey information about
their emotions, needs, intentions, attitudes, and thoughts without the use of verbal language.
- Nonverbal cues serve important functions in human social life, including expressing
emotions; conveying interpersonal attitudes such as friendliness, insult, or dominance;
regulating affect; regulating turn taking between people in conversation; and facilitating
one's own speech production.
- Nonverbal signals are important in many psychological processes, including attachment,
attraction, social influence, deception, self-presentation, and interpersonal self-fulfilling
prophecies.
- Cultural, gender, and other group differences in nonverbal behaviour have been documented
as well as individual differences in usage and in the accuracy of nonverbal cue transmission
and reception.

Domains of Nonverbal Communication

- Nonverbal communication spans two primary domains: Paralinguistic and Situational.
The Paralinguistic domain of nonverbal communication has both receptive and expressive
modalities. It refers to nonverbal signals that have the capacity to communicate without the
use of language, or that add information above and beyond what is explicitly stated verbally.
This can occur via a variety of channels (e.g., prosody, gestures, posture, and facial
expressions) (Borod, Bloom, Brickman, Nakhutina, & Curko, 2002). Paralinguistic
communication can convey an emotional tone (e.g., sadness, happiness, disappointment),
meaning (e.g., sarcasm communicates that the opposite of what is being explicitly stated is
actually true), or grammatical concepts, which are sometimes referred to as “linguistic
intonation” or “propositional prosody” (e.g., questions vs. statements).
- Importantly, while some basic aspects of paralinguistic communication are learned, others
appear to be innate. The learned forms of paralinguistic communication include the ability
to understand or produce nonverbal signals that are specific to a particular culture or even a
particular person, the ability to convey and comprehend grammatical concepts, and the
ability to assign labels or meanings to various nonverbal expressions. The inherent aspects
of paralinguistic communication refer to hardwired basic emotional expressions that are
processed rapidly, sometimes even pre-consciously, and involve a variety of species-specific
visual and auditory signals that are important to one’s survival. Additionally, in response to
such signals, all normal individuals automatically and without any conscious effort produce
nonverbal vocal, postural, and facial expressions that can be helpful for the survival of other
members of one’s social group. For example, in response to a threatening stimulus, one
automatically generates a fearful facial expression. This expression, in turn, is rapidly and
automatically detected by other members of the group, serving as a warning of an
approaching danger.
- The Situational domain of nonverbal communication has only a receptive mode. It refers to
one’s ability to comprehend complex social situations that may involve an interaction
among several people, between people and their environment, or between people and their
social contexts. As such, Situational communication relies on a good grasp of social norms,
the ability to detect discrepancies between expectations and reality, the ability to engage in
perspective taking, and the ability to integrate multiple pieces of information. Additionally,
comprehension of situations often requires good receptive paralinguistic skills, although
these skills are not always necessary. For example, seeing a lethal car accident, hearing
about a friend’s terminal illness, or reading about a devastating earthquake, should evoke an
empathic understanding of the emotional reactions likely experienced by the victims of
these events, without necessarily requiring the ability to comprehend other people’s facial
expressions.
- Understanding of complex situations can also be conceptualized as a person’s capacity for
either Emotional or Cognitive empathy.
Emotional empathy refers to the capacity to intuitively feel what others are feeling. In
contrast,
Cognitive empathy refers to the ability to cognitively understand how others might be
feeling. Dissociation between Emotional and Cognitive empathy occurs in both clinical
(Dziobek et al., 2008; Rankin, Kramer, & Miller, 2005; Shamay-Tsoory, Aharon-Peretz,
& Perry, 2009; Shamay-Tsoory, Tomer, Yaniv, & Aharon-Peretz, 2002) and healthy
populations (Davis, Hull, Young, & Warren, 1987).
- Emotional empathy is thought to rely on one’s implicit or unconscious mimicking of the
affective displays of others (whether these displays are real or imagined), and as such is
thought to rely at least in part on the Mirror Neuron System (MNS).
- In contrast, Cognitive empathy is thought to rely on the capacity for perspective taking also
known as the “Theory of Mind” (ToM) (Premack & Woodruff, 1978).

Cognitive Developmental Disabilities:

Language impairment
- Verbal and nonverbal communication deficits are an essential part of the autism triad.
Language generally parallels intelligence. Echolalia, while occasionally seen as a brief
 developmental interlude in normal children, and infrequently seen in persistent fashion in
pure DLDs, is common in children on the autism spectrum. (Echolalic speech often portends
the development of more fluent speech, and therefore it is not necessarily a bad sign.) As
previously stated, a thorough assessment of hearing and the evaluation of a skilled speech
and language pathologist are essential.
- In low-functioning children, verbal auditory agnosia, phonologic-syntactic, and lexical–
syntactic language disorders are seen. In higher-functioning children, pragmatic and
semantic deficits are characteristic. This includes deficits in who/what/where/when/how
questions and in language turn-taking. In addition, prosody is frequently impaired, such that
these children speak in monotone rather than in well-modulated speech. Hyperactivity and
inattention relate inversely to language competence in autistic children under the age of
3 years.
- It is the consensus that language competence at 5 or 6 years of age quite accurately predicts
long-term prognosis, since language, as suggested earlier, determines intelligence, which
then relates to functionality. Chances for a child who remains nonverbal at the age of 8 or
9 years becoming linguistically competent are very poor.
-

Adulthood: Emotional Development

Are There Changes in the Expression of Emotion?

- The bulk of research on the nonverbal communication of emotion during this century and
even during Darwin's time has been conducted on facial expressions. Research has shown
that there is increasing conventionalization of facial expressions across the childhood years,
which in large measure involves adopting cultural and familial display rules and includes a
general dampening of expressive behavior; there is far less research on adulthood. Although
patterns of muscular activity remain basically the same, for example, oblique brows that
signal sadness in children, signal sadness in younger and older adults as well, Carol
Malatesta-Magai and colleagues have found several distinguishing differences in older vs.
younger adult faces (see the review in Magai and Passman 1998). In one study, younger and
older participants were videotaped during an emotion-induction procedure in which they
relived and recounted emotionally charged episodes involving four basic emotions. Older
individuals (50 years old or above) were found to be more emotionally expressive than
younger subjects in terms of the frequency of expressive behavior across a range of
emotions; they expressed a higher rate of anger expressions in the anger-induction
condition, a higher rate of sadness during the sadness induction, greater fear under the fear-
induction condition, and greater interest during the interest condition.
- In another study, older adults were found to be more expressive in another sense. Malatesta-
Magai and Izard videotaped and coded the facial expressions of young, middle-aged and
older women while they recounted emotional experiences. Using an objective facial affect
coding system, they found that while the facial expressions of the older vs. younger women
were more telegraphic in that they tended to involve fewer regions of the face, they were
also more complex in that they showed more instances of blended expressions where signals
of one emotion were mixed with those of another. This greater complexity of older faces
appears to pose a problem for those who would interpret their expressions. Young, middle-
aged, and untrained ‘judges’ attempted to ‘decode’ the videotaped expressions of the women
 in the above study. With the objectively coded material serving as the index of accuracy,
Malatesta-Magai and colleagues found that judges had the greatest difficulty with and were
most inaccurate when decoding older faces; however, the accuracy with which judges
decoded expressions varied with age congruence between judges and emotion expressors,
suggesting a decoding advantage accruing through social contact with like-aged peers
(Magai and Passman 1998).
- Another aspect of facial behavior that appears to change with age has to do with what
Ekman has called ‘slow sign vehicle’ changes—changes accruing from the wrinkle and sag
of facial musculature with age. Malatesta-Magai has also noted a personality-based effect
involving the ‘crystallization’ of emotion on the face as people get older; that is, emotion-
based aspects of personality seem to become imprinted on the face and become observable
as static facial characteristics in middle and old age. In one study, untrained decoders rating
the facial expressions of older individuals expressing a range of emotions made a
preponderance of errors; the errors were found to be associated with the emotion traits of the
older expressors.

Communication

Pictures
- Once children are able to use non-verbal communication to indicate choices using real
objects it may be appropriate to introduce pictures for expressive communication. By
replacing real objects with pictures the child will develop the skills to ‘talk’ about things
that are not actually present, in the way that a typically developing child uses spoken words.
Like signing, pictures can be effective in giving communication partners clues if the child's
speech is difficult to understand, or they may serve as an alternative form of communication
if the child does not have speech, but has specific ideas the child wishes to communicate.
- Pictures may also have a role in supporting language understanding. A child may not
understand ‘we're going to the hospital today’, but may recognize a picture of the hospital if
it is a place that the child has visited several times before.
- Pictures can vary in complexity. Initially a child may need to see a photograph of the actual
person, place or object being talked about. The next stage would be recognizing that a line
drawing (colour or black and white) can represent a person, place, object or activity. This
level of abstraction makes it possible to represent concepts that are difficult to photograph,
for example, ‘fast’ and ‘more’. Line drawings can also increase applicability of objects and
events: ‘cuddle’ can be used for a cuddle with mum or dad, granny or a doll.
- Several vocabularies of line drawings have been developed for children with limited speech.
These are usually described as symbol systems and have the advantage of consistency, that
is, the same symbols will be used in the nursery, the school and the therapy clinic. Most
have computer software packages so that parents and professionals without drawing skills
can create communication materials (see websites and addresses at the end of the chapter for
further information on different systems and sources of information).
- A good way to introduce pictures is to make personalized scrapbooks and photograph
albums. These can include photos of people who are important to the child. Leaflets, tickets
and photos from special outings and events can be collected: these could then be used when
discussing what has happened. This will enable the child to ‘talk’ about past events,
something which may not be possible for a child with limited speech. If a child has speech
 that is not easily intelligible, people who were not present at the event under discussion may
be helped to understand what the child is trying to say with the aid of the pictures.
Packaging from favourite foods can be used to indicate preferences and to make choices.
Reduced versions of the covers from videos or storybooks can be a more efficient way of
presenting choices rather than having to take all the videos or books off the shelf to find out
which one the child wants. Figure 18.9 shows a chart offering the child a number of choices
for places to go.
- Experimentation may be required in order to discover how best to present picture materials
for an individual child. The size and layout of pictures on a page will need to match a child's
visual and motor skills. Some children will be able to point directly to pictures, others will
have inaccurate fist-pointing or may rely on eye-pointing. Previous experience of eye-
pointing to objects can transfer to using pictures for communication (see sections on joint
attention and gestures above). Positioning will also need careful consideration as the parent
should be able to see both the child and the pictures the child is selecting.
- If a child has limited speech but does have the ability to indicate ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to questions,
it may appear that asking questions may be a more efficient way of communicating.
Although this can undoubtedly be quick and effective in many instances, it also has its
limitations: the child must wait for the carers to ask the right question, and initiating a new
topic will be difficult. Introducing pictures is probably best seen as an initial step in the
process of expanding communication: once the child understands how powerful pictures can
be in conveying specific messages, more extensive personalized communication systems
can be developed. Vocabulary for curriculum topics, specific activities, interests and a wide
range of communication situations can be developed, enabling the child to initiate and
conduct conversations across various settings. This process of expansion of a picture-based
system is likely to take place over many years if the system is to meet the child's changing
needs.
- Printed words always accompany picture symbols, and so can be a useful part of developing
early literacy skills. Parents may question the value of pictures or symbols: why not simply
teach a child who has limited speech to read? Most children are highly competent language
users before they develop literacy skills. Literate adults who are skilled readers can forget
what it is like to be unable to read until they travel to a foreign country and are suddenly
dependent on pictures and visual signs if they cannot read the language. In developmental
terms, pictures can be read and understood several years before text can be deciphered.

Structure and Structuralism: Semiotic Approaches

- In a semiotic perspective, the structures of nonverbal communication, i.e., the circulation of

commodities and the structures of verbal communication, i.e., the circulation of messages,
appear as different structures of the same social process, i.e., the communication process.
“Man communicates with his whole social organization,” writes Rossi-Landi (2003 [1968],
Eng. trans.: 67). This means that all cultural phenomena may be viewed as communicative
phenomena based on sign structures and systems, and that human nonverbal communication
must be placed alongside verbal communication. Every single cultural fact may be
approached and understood as a message assembled on the basis of codes. Therefore, a
general theory of society coincides with general semiotics (cf. Eco, 1968). ‘The study of any
 sign-system becomes useful for the study of any other […] especially because, in studying
one system or the other, what one studies is fundamentally the same thing’ (ibid.: 69).
- This becomes clearer when we consider that in the case both of verbal and nonverbal
messages semiotics addresses the same problems – the work that produces them and that
makes exchange and communication possible. For example, Claude Lévi-Strauss (cf. 1958)
used the categories of linguistics in his studies on the rules of matrimony
and kinship systems, offering a truly formidable example of the application of conceptual
frameworks elaborated in relation to verbal communication to nonverbal
communication. Rossi-Landi (2003 [1968]) attempted the opposite procedure: he applied
categories elaborated in the study of nonverbal communicative sign structures, that is, the
categories of economics in its classical phase with David Ricardo and Marx, to verbal
language.