Nonverbal Responses Research Articles

How do children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder interact in a clinical dental examination? A video analysis

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is currently the most common behavioural disorder in school-age children. The aim of this study was to perform a detailed analysis of behavioural interactions between the dentist and the child patient with ADHD. All children born in 1991 (n = 555) in one Swedish municipality were screened for attention and learning problems, and assessed for ADHD. Twenty-two children with ADHD, and a control group of 47 children without attention and learning problems, were included in the study. The dental recall visit was recorded on video. The interaction between the dentist and the child was analysed in detail and scored as verbal and non-verbal initiatives and responses. Compared to the children in the control group, the children with ADHD made significantly more initiatives, especially initiatives that did not focus on the examination or the dentist. The children with ADHD had fewer verbal responses and more missing responses. In conclusion, the problems in communication resulted in less two-way communication between the dentist and the children with ADHD than the interaction between the dentist and the children in the control group. The children with ADHD had particular difficulties staying focused on the examination.

The Anti-Naturalism of Some Language Centered Accounts of Belief

Common sense explanations of human action are often framed in terms of an agent's beliefs and desires. Recent widely received views also take believing and desiring (as well wishing, intending and even thinking) as attitudes of an agent to linguistic or quasi-linguistic entities. It is here claimed that such a narrow view of cognitive attitudes is not supportable, since even among lingual non-verbal responses are often overriding evidence for belief and desire, even where they run counter to sincere verbal assents. The view is also curiously non naturalistic in that it disallows ascribing beliefs and desires altogether to non-lingual and pre-lingual. In the present paper a “common sense” explanation of action in accordance with the triad Desire, Belief, Action, is seen as a useful phenomenological “theory” provided that language centrality is not taken as essential.

Using Scientific Knowledge to Inform Preschool Assessment: Making the Case for “Empirical Validity”

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 crystallized the concern for accountability in education. National testing was mandated as a way to improve the “broken” educational system. Publicly funded early education programs were not spared from such testing. While the positive effects of high-quality early education on children’s later school achievement is well demonstrated, too many early care and educational settings in the United States are of minimal or poor quality. Accountability is clearly important for increasing the quality of our early childhood programs, however, it is not yet evident how best to formulate a standard of accountability that reflects the body of knowledge we have gained concerning how young children learn. In this report, we propose two major thrusts designed to bring about a more scientifically informed accountability system: reconceptualizing the ways in which we think about the validity of our test instruments, and reconceptualizing markers of development from products of learning (performance standards) to processes of learning. We introduce the term “empirical validity” to draw attention to the fact that assessments should be built on current empirical work in the various developmental domains. This report focuses on the domains of language and literacy, two areas of major concern for the Federal Head Start program and for which there is an abundance of current research. This body of knowledge provides many examples illustrating how an emphasis on process rather than product can be vital for improving the quality of education. For example, although vocabulary is centrally important and psychometrically adequate tests of early vocabulary exist, these tests do not measure essential aspects of word learning that have been identified as predictive of later language and reading success in early language learning literature. Our case study of language and literacy illustrates how today’s developmental science offers a new knowledge that can be strategically incorporated in assessments for empirically valid testing of children’s competencies. The same argument for “empirically valid” and evidence-based assessments applies to other domains of cognitive growth and to socio-emotional development. The future of preschool assessment would be well served by attention to primary research that focuses on the processes of learning. In this report, we also suggest that one possible avenue for progress in assessment would center on integrative and dynamic assessment techniques that would comprehensively capture the nature of children’s learning, minimize validity concerns related to context and culture, and evaluate how competencies in different developmental domains interact for optimal learning. To bridge the gap between science and policy, developmental scientists and test developers are urged to work together to create innovative ways to chart the developmental processes that support learning and progress toward social maturity in ways designed to ensure that research findings are continuously reflected in current assessments.

Executive functions in children with communication impairments, in relation to autistic symptomatology

Although impairment in executive functions has been described in autism, there has been debate as to whether response inhibition is specifically affected. We compared four groups: high-functioning autism; pragmatic language impairment; specific language impairment; and control. Inhibition was assessed using two subtests from the Test of Everyday Attention for Children, one requiring a verbal response and the other a non-verbal response. Although we found evidence of inhibitory deficits, these were neither specific to autism, nor linked to particular aspects of autistic symptomatology. Rather, they appeared to be associated with poor verbal skills and inattention. It is suggested that future studies need to control for structural language skills and attention deficit when evaluating cognitive deficits in autism. Reliance on control groups matched solely on vocabulary level or nonverbal mental age may obscure the important role played by language skills in executive functions.

Color Categories Are Not Arbitrary

Recent, well-controlled studies in cross-language color naming and cross-language tests of color memory and learning have made important contributions to our understanding of which aspects of cross-language color naming and nonverbal response to colors may and may not be attributed to pan-human properties of color appearance. Valuable as these results are, some studies have led to more relativistic conclusions than their results justify. In particular, these conclusions ignore the issue of whether there exists across languages a statistical tendency toward basing color terminology systems on black, white, and the four Hering opponent hues.

Diversity and Learner-Centered Education

Diversity and Learner-Centered Education

Female Consumers’ Reactions to Body Scanning

The body scanner is a new technology that has the potential to resolve issues for the apparel industry in fit of clothing and in communication and visualization of apparel fit. The interest consumers have in the scan process, in being scanned, and in allowing retailers and manufacturers to use their scan data is crucial to the commercial success of these applications. Two related studies were conducted. First, 203 female participants aged 35 to 55 were surveyed after they were scanned and viewed their scanned images on the computer monitor and in a movie file. For 22 of these participants, an observer also recorded their verbal and nonverbal responses to the scan process and viewing their scan. Although general acceptance of scanning was very high, women who were married and had over $100,000 household income were significantly less comfortable with some aspects of the body scan process. Observations of participants’ verbal, facial, and bodily expressions found some participants to be unsettled and unprepared for interactions with the unfamiliar yet personalizing technology.

Discussing those not present: comprehension of references to absent caregivers

The ability to understand references to the absent enables conversation to move beyond the here-and-now to matters distant in both space and time. Such understanding requires appreciating the relation between language and communicative intent: one must recognize speakers' intentions to use language to converge on a shared conversational focus that is at least somewhat independent of the current context. Despite its centrality to language development, the emergence of absent reference understanding has received little systematic attention. The present research investigated the responses of 60 infants aged 1;0 to 2 ; 6 to a researcher talking about both present and absent caregivers. When infants aged 1 ; 3 and older heard talk about absent caregivers they displayed a complex of nonverbal communicative responses that were divergent from their responses to talk about a present person. Infants aged 2 ; 0 and older provided responses indicating understanding of absent reference. The findings suggest that by 1 ; 3 infants may have at least a tacit appreciation of language as a device for coordinating conversational focus, and hint at increased sophistication in infants' absent reference comprehension skills at 2 ; 0.

Conversational repair in speakers with autism spectrum disorder.

The ability to repair communicative breakdown is an important pragmatic language skill, yet very little is known about it in the population of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous investigations have shown that people with ASD, across a variety of ages and language levels, recognized communicative breakdown and responded to requests for clarification (RQCLs) with a wide variety of repair strategies. No previous work has assessed the repair abilities of speakers with ASD when faced with a persistent communicative breakdown indicated by a stacked series of RQCLs. The present paper aimed to determine whether school-aged, high-functioning children with ASD responded to a stacked series of RQCLs in a way similar to children matched for language age. Nine school-aged, high-functioning children with ASD were recruited and matched to nine control group children based on language level. During conversation, an unfamiliar examiner engineered 10 episodes of communicative breakdown. Each consisted of a stacked series of three RQCLs ('What?', 'I don't understand', 'Tell me another way'). Verbal and non-verbal responses to each RQCL were coded. Responses were analysed by a series of repeated measures analyses of variance with diagnostic group and RQCL type/position as independent variables and type of repair as the dependent variable. Children with ASD were similar to language age-matched control children in responding to RQCLs and employing a variety of repair strategies. In addition, their pattern of responding over the series of RQCLs was very similar to the controls in varying the repair strategy by adding increasingly more information as the breakdown persisted, i.e. as the sequence of RQCLs progressed. Children with ASD, however, were significantly more likely than language age-matched controls to respond to an RQCL with an inappropriate response. The ability to repair communicative breakdown successfully raises questions about some of the currently popular theories about the source and nature of social and communicative deficits in autism. In addition, the presence of significantly more inappropriate utterances in the group with ASD poses both theoretical and clinical challenges. In theoretical terms, several possible explanations are proposed, but future work will need to test these hypotheses. Clinically, it is important to focus on utterances that disrupt the conversational flow and that generate severe social penalties for the speaker with ASD.

Assessment of Anxiety in Intensive Care Patients By Using the Faces Anxiety Scale

Anxiety is difficult to detect in patients receiving mechanical ventilation because clinical signs are confounded and patients often cannot respond to validated anxiety measures. Most patients can respond to the single-item Faces Anxiety Scale. To assess the validity of the Faces Anxiety Scale, the frequency and severity of state anxiety, and correlates of anxiety in intensive care patients. A research assistant made a single clinical judgment of anxiety in the range of 1 to 10 on the basis of patients' nonverbal responses (ie, nods) to 9 questions about mood and their physical and behavioral signs. Patients then responded to the Faces Anxiety Scale. Demographic, clinical, and pharmacological data were obtained from the patients' charts. Mean age of the 106 patients was 61 years; 62% were men. Admission diagnoses were cardiovascular in 26% of patients, respiratory in 26%, trauma in 18%, neurological in 12%, gastrointestinal in 12%, and other in 6%. At the time of anxiety assessment, 89% were receiving mechanical ventilation. The correlation between patients' self-reports of anxiety on the Anxiety Faces Scale and the research assistant's assessments was 0.64 (P <.001). Some anxiety was reported by 85% of patients (mean level 2.9; SD 1.2). Anxiety levels were lower in patients who had recently received sedatives or opioids but were not related to heart rate or blood pressure. The Faces Anxiety Scale is a valid means of measuring anxiety in intensive care patients. Anxiety is common in these patients and is often moderate to severe.

Effects of Social Anxiety on Nonverbal Accuracy and Response Time I: Facial Expressions

Cognitive models of social anxiety provide a basis for predicting that the ability to process nonverbal information accurately and quickly should be impaired during the experience of state anxiety. To test this hypothesis, we assigned participants to threatening and non-threatening conditions and asked them to label the emotions expressed in a series of faces. It was predicted that social anxiety would be positively associated with errors and response times in threatening conditions, but not in a non-threatening condition. It was also predicted that high social anxiety would be associated with more errors and longer response times when identifying similar expressions such as sadness, anger, and fear. The results indicate that social anxiety was not associated with errors in identifying facial expressions of emotion, regardless of the level of state anxiety experienced. However, social anxiety scores were found to be significantly related to response times to identify facial expressions, but the relationship varied depending on the level of state anxiety experienced. Methodological and theoretical implications of using response time data when assessing nonverbal ability are discussed.

Detecting Deception: The Benefit of Looking at a Combination of Behavioral, Auditory and Speech Content Related Cues in a Systematic Manner

People communicate with each other across distance in a variety of ways, for example, via the telephone, via electronic forms of communication (the written word) or via videolinks. In this article, behavioral, auditory and speech content related cues which research has shown discriminate (to some extent) between liars and truth tellers will be discussed. Although research has indicated that people are generally poor at detecting deceit, some recent studies suggest that looking at nonverbal, auditory and speech content related responses in an objective and systematic manner will lead to more accurate classifications of liars and truth tellers. These studies will be discussed. Apart from examining the available cues objectively and systematically, lie detection might further improve if the lie detector employs certain communication techniques. In the final part of this article we will discuss some of these techniques.

Detecting Deceit Via Analyses of Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior in Children and Adults

This experiment examined children's and undergraduates' verbal and nonverbal deceptive behavior, and the extent to which their truths and lies could be correctly classified by paying attention to these responses. Participants (N= 196) aged 5–6, 10–11, and 14–15, as well as university undergraduates, participated in an erasing the blackboard event, and told the truth or lied about the event afterwards. Nonverbal and verbal responses were coded, the latter with Criteria-Based Content Analysis and Reality Monitoring. Although children and undergraduates demonstrated different behaviors (for example, the children obtained lower CBCA scores and made more movements), actual cues to deceit were remarkably similar across different age groups (for example, both 5–6-year-olds and undergraduates obtained lower CBCA scores and made fewer movements while lying). A combination of verbal and nonverbal lie detection methods resulted in more correct classifications of liars and truth tellers than the verbal and nonverbal lie detection methods individually, with the combined method obtaining hit rates as high as 88%.

Detecting Deceit Via Analyses of Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior in Children and Adults

This experiment examined children's and undergraduates' verbal and nonverbal deceptive behavior, and the extent to which their truths and lies could be correctly classified by paying attention to these responses. Participants (N= 196) aged 5–6, 10–11, and 14–15, as well as university undergraduates, participated in an erasing the blackboard event, and told the truth or lied about the event afterwards. Nonverbal and verbal responses were coded, the latter with Criteria-Based Content Analysis and Reality Monitoring. Although children and undergraduates demonstrated different behaviors (for example, the children obtained lower CBCA scores and made more movements), actual cues to deceit were remarkably similar across different age groups (for example, both 5–6-year-olds and undergraduates obtained lower CBCA scores and made fewer movements while lying). A combination of verbal and nonverbal lie detection methods resulted in more correct classifications of liars and truth tellers than the verbal and nonverbal lie detection methods individually, with the combined method obtaining hit rates as high as 88%.

Effects on humans elicited by inhaling the fragrance of essential oils: sensory test, multi-channel thermometric study and forehead surface potential wave measurement on basil and peppermint.

The effects on humans inhaling the fragrance of essential oils were examined in terms of a sensory test, a multi-channel skin thermometer study and a portable forehead surface electroencephalographic (IBVA-EEG) measurement. The essential oils examined in this study were those of basil and peppermint, because our previous sensory test had indicated an opposite effect of these essential oils when mental work was undertaken; the inhalation of basil produced a more favorable impression after work than before work, whereas peppermint produced an unfavorable impression under these circumstances. For subjects administered basil or peppermint before and after mental work using an inhalator, a series of multi-channel skin thermometer studies and IBVA-EEG measurements were conducted. Using such paired odorants, our results showed that when compared between before and after mental work assigned to subjects: (1) the inhalation of basil, in which a favorable impression was predominant on the whole in terms of the sensory evaluation spectrum, was shown to be associated upward tendency in finger-tip skin temperature; (2) whereas these situations were opposite in the case of peppermint, in which the reversed (unfavorable) feature in sensory profiling was accompanied by a decrease in the magnitude of beta waves and a decrease in the finger-tip skin temperature both based on Welch's method, even at p < 0.01, implying a decreasing propensity of the aroused state and of the arousal response. The elucidation of such sensory and physiological endpoints of paired odorants would be of primary importance for human chemoreception science, because these are only rarely recorded during the same experiments, and this paradigm is highly informative about non-verbal responses to odorants.

Communication Interface with Eye-Gaze and Head Gesture Using Successive DP Matching and Fuzzy Inference

This paper proposes a communication interface with eye-gaze and head gesture. Visual sensorimotor integration with eye-head cooperation is considered, especially head gesture accompanied with vestibulo-ocular reflex is used for selecting object in the screen. Eye-mark recorder and motion tracking system were used to tracking eye movement and head movement, respectively. Nonverbal response animation with eye contact was introduced in the interaction system. In identifying the head gesture, we adopted a modified dynamic programming matching method and fuzzy inference.

Color categories are not arbitrary

Recent, well-controlled studies in cross-language color naming and cross-language tests of color memory and learning have made important contributions to our understanding of which aspects of cross-language color naming and nonverbal response to colors may and may not be attributed to pan-human properties of color appearance. Valuable as these results are, some studies have led to more relativistic conclusions than their results justify. In particular, these conclusions ignore the issue of whether there exists across languages a statistical tendency toward basing color terminology systems on black, white, and the four Hering opponent hues.

Young Children's Detection of Violations in Familiar Stories and Emerging Comprehension Monitoring

This study examined young children's ability to detect violations to script-like story text to investigate the role of detection in the development of comprehension monitoring. An online expectancy violation detection task was used during the reading of familiar stories, and nonverbal as well as verbal responses were measured. Results revealed that children 30 to 47 months of age detected violations to familiar text. However, the youngest children are not as skilled as older children in doing so. Developmentally, solely nonverbal detection responses were the first to emerge for story violations. Around 36 months of age, children not only increased the frequency of their accurate detections of violations but also incorporated their nonverbal expressions of detection into a matrix of a more thorough comprehension monitoring response.

Stereotypical Verbal and Nonverbal Responses While Deceiving Others

This experiment examined the impact of public self-consciousness and acting ability on processes and stereotypical responses during deception. Seventy-three nursing students were videotaped while (a) telling the truth and (b) lying about a theft they had observed. A variety of cues were coded, including criteria-based content analysis (CBCA) and reality monitoring (RM), in which high scores indicated honest responding. Compared with truth tellers, liars waited longer before giving an answer, spoke faster, made more speech hesitations, showed fewer illustrators, and showed lower CBCA and RM scores. Public self-consciousness was positively correlated with trying to control behavior but negatively correlated with RM scores. Ability to act was negatively correlated with RM scores, with showing stereotypical deceptive facial behavior (gaze aversion and smiling), with having to think hard while lying, and with being nervous while lying.

Correspondence Between Instructions, Performance, and Self-Descriptions in A Conditional Discrimination Task: The Effects of Feedback and Type of Matching Response

Four experiments were designed to evaluate the functional correspondence of effective performance with correct or incorrect instructions and correct or incorrect self-descriptions in a first-order matching-to-sample task. These studies included verbal or nonverbal matching responses and provided feedback or not after the participants described their matching performance. The results point to three possible discrimination learning processes in humans: (1) learning through instructions, with a possible insensitivity to consequences unless the correspondence between instructions and feedback breaks down; (2) learning through feedback, with an inability of participants to describe their own behavior; and (3) a genuine “rule-governed” behavior consisting of successful task performance and explicit verbal behavior describing the actual contingencies effective for such performance.