What is a verbal or nonverbal stimulus that is meaningful to a receiver?

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.

Nonverbal communication differs from verbal communication in several ways. First, while verbal communication is direct and involves the use of a single channel (spoken word, written word), nonverbal communication is continuous and ongoing and involves many channels communicating simultaneously. Verbal communication uses a shared code (i.e., language), while nonverbal communication is much more impressionistic, with the receiver of nonverbal communication giving a unique interpretation to what the nonverbal cues mean. In fact, most nonverbal behavior is not processed discretely (i.e., typically, we don’t just focus on one particular nonverbal cue), but is perceived as a ‘gestalt’. Verbal communication is precise and intentional, while nonverbal communication is often spontaneous and much of it is not intentionally communicated. Often, we are not even consciously aware of many of our nonverbal behaviors. Although nonverbal cues can communicate liking/positivity or dominance, and static nonverbal cues of appearance (e.g., attractiveness, shape of face, hair, or mode of dress) can communicate gender, age, and a variety of factors, nonverbal communication is best suited to convey affect. In fact, one could argue that it is impossible to accurately convey emotions without using nonverbal cues (e.g., if a person says that he or she is happy but his or her face doesn’t show it, you likely won’t believe him or her).

Perhaps the greatest focus of nonverbal communication research has been on increasing our understanding of the complex dynamics of facial expressions. Humans have evolved an intricate system of facial muscles that allow for the expression of many human emotions. Most studied are the common, and universally expressed, emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. Psychologist Paul Ekman and colleagues have devised a sophisticated method for coding the firing of facial muscles and how these combine to create various facial expressions of emotion. A good example of the complexity of facial emotions is the smile. Although we stereotypically consider a smile to be indicative of happiness or pleasure, nonverbal communication researchers can code the pattern of muscle firing that is indicative of a true, felt smile and distinguish it from smiles that are not consistent with a pleasant emotion, such as the smile that occurs when we are uncomfortable or the fake, social smile that we may give if we hear a not-very-funny joke. Facial expressions of emotion constitute the richest source of nonverbal cues, and play an important part both in interpersonal communication and in person perception.

Much research on nonverbal communication has focused on the part that static physical cues, such as cues of appearance, facial expression, or posture, play in communicating information or in the impression formation process. For example, there has been an entire line of research devoted to the role of facial physiognomy and attractiveness in impression ratings of dominance, intelligence, sociability, trustworthiness, and other traits of strangers. Yet, most nonverbal communication in social interaction is dynamic, involving faces and bodies in motion. This article explores nonverbal communication research that has focused on both static and dynamic expression through facial cues and body movements, the methods used to capture dynamic nonverbal communication, and the results of studies of both static and dynamic nonverbal cues in the process of impression formation. We will also discuss methodologies used to capture and study nonverbal behavior, as well as implications and applications of nonverbal communication research for practice.

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).

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.

2.2 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.

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.

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