Nonverbal Social Behaviors Research Articles

Modulation of facial mimicry by attitudes

The current experiment explored the influence of attitudes on facial reactions to emotional faces. The participants’ attitudes (positive, neutral, and negative) towards three types of characters were manipulated by written reports. Afterwards participants saw happy, neutral, and sad facial expressions of the respective characters while their facial muscular reactions (M. Corrugator supercilii and M. Zygomaticus major) were recorded electromyografically. Results revealed facial mimicry reactions to happy and sad faces of positive characters, but less and even incongruent facial muscular reactions to happy and sad faces of negative characters. Overall, the results show that attitudes, formed in a few minutes, and only by reports and not by own experiences, can moderate automatic non-verbal social behavior, i.e. facial mimicry.

Gender-Specific Approaches to Developing Emotionally Intelligent Learning Companions

The nonverbal social behaviors of virtual learning companions and their affect and task support have gender-specific impacts on learners' frustration and self-awareness during a challenging problem-solving activity. Social bonding and affective support between teachers and learners have considerable impact on learners' performance and motivation. One way to develop a social bond with learners is to provide assistance. According to research in this area (see the sidebar Related Work on Affective Tutoring Systems), systems that provide affective support to frustrated users can reduce frustration. A study of expert human tutors' interactions with their students found that up to half of these interactions focus on supporting the learner's affective state. Currently, most intelligent tutoring systems provide predominantly task-based support.

The convergent validity of the Matson Evaluation of Social Skills for Individuals with Severe Retardation (MESSIER)

The convergent validity of the Matson Evaluation of Social Skills for Persons with Severe Retardation (MESSIER) was examined. We administered the MESSIER and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS) to 892 individuals with severe and profound mental retardation residing in a residential state facility. The MESSIER subscales were compared to equivalent subdomains from the VABS that have been demonstrated through research to be both reliable and valid. Significant positive correlations were found between corresponding MESSIER subscales and VABS subdomains on social behaviors. The findings also indicated that this pattern of positive correlation remained constant when comparing both verbal and nonverbal social behaviors. The implications and clinical utility of the findings are discussed.

Gaze avoidance: Personality and social judgments of people who avoid direct face-to-face contact

Some people maintain direct, face-to-face contact during interaction, whereas others avert their gaze or turn their face while interacting. Research on individual differences in gaze avoidance, while sparse, falls into two areas. One concerns the personality and psychopathology correlates of gaze aversion, and the other concerns social judgments made of people who avert their gaze during interaction. The findings generally show that gaze aversion is associated with unfavorable traits (shyness, social anxiety, risk for schizophrenia) and negative social evaluations (gaze averse people are rated as more deceptive and less sincere). The present study took advantage of an archival data set that contained facial photographs from which gaze avoidance could be scored. The correlates of gaze avoidance were different for men and women. Gaze avoidant men tended to be emotionally inhibited and overcontrolled, and reported a high incidence of various psychosomatic and physical symptoms. Gaze avoidant women, on the other hand, were high on measures of psychopathy, hysteria, and traditional femininity, they tended to have fewer physical symptoms. Gaze avoidant women were also viewed by others in a negative light (as being disagreeable, unconscientious, unattractive, and even somewhat lower on intelligence). In males, none of the social judgment variables correlated significantly with gaze avoidance. Results are discussed in terms of sex differences in the meaning and communicative function of this non-verbal social behavior.

Effects of preschool environments on nonverbal social behavior: toddlers' interpersonal distances to teachers and classmates change with environmental density, classroom design, and parent-child interactions.

Toddlers' interpersonal spacing patterns were studied in environments of different density and design. Results showed that an apparently spacious (74 m2) classroom may produce behavioral changes reminiscent of crowding in young children. When more space (864 m2) was available: (1) children increased interpersonal distances overall; (2) children aggregated more with classmates and teachers, fragmenting into subgroups which were separated from the class overall. With visual dividers added to the classroom to facilitate subgrouping, toddlers formed larger subgroups with teachers. Parent/child behavior during separation also affected distances: longer hand-holding and verbalization were found in children who stayed further from others.