Socio-emotional Communication Research Articles

Predicting pointing from early socioemotional communication with mothers, fathers, and strangers through the lens of temperamental reactivity.

Socioemotional and referential communication are primary expressions of interpersonal engagement in infancy and beyond. Early socioemotional communication in dyadic interactions may form a foundation for triadic referential communication and gesture production, yet the role of temperament in moderating their association has not been examined. We investigated whether early socioemotional communication behaviors, and infant temperamental reactivity, were associated with later pointing production. Participants were 51 infants (45% girls) and both their parents (86.5% Dutch). Early infant socioemotional communication (production of smile, vocalizations, and gaze) was observed during separate home-based face-to-face interactions with mothers, fathers, and strangers at 4 and 8 months. At both ages, mothers and fathers reported on infant temperamental surgency and negative affectivity, and overall means were calculated. Referential communication (declarative pointing) was measured during structured lab-based observations at 12 and 15 months. Socioemotional and referential communication behaviors were microanalytically coded second by second. Poisson multilevel regression analyses indicated interaction effects between temperament and smile, vocalizations, and gazes to the adult's face with each partner in predicting pointing. High levels of infant temperamental surgency tended to enhance positive associations between early socioemotional communication behaviors with mothers and fathers and pointing. By contrast, high levels of negative affectivity tended to dampen associations between early communication behaviors with strangers and pointing. Results highlight the importance of infant socioemotional communication with diverse partners and the moderating role of temperamental reactivity in predicting referential communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Predicting Pointing From Early Socioemotional Communication With Mothers, Fathers, and Strangers Through the Lens of Temperamental Reactivity

Supplemental Material for Predicting Pointing From Early Socioemotional Communication With Mothers, Fathers, and Strangers Through the Lens of Temperamental Reactivity

Enhancing socio-emotional communication and quality of life in young cochlear implant recipients: Perspectives from parameter-specific morphing and caricaturing.

The use of digitally modified stimuli with enhanced diagnostic information to improve verbal communication in children with sensory or central handicaps was pioneered by Tallal and colleagues in 1996, who targeted speech comprehension in language-learning impaired children. Today, researchers are aware that successful communication cannot be reduced to linguistic information—it depends strongly on the quality of communication, including non-verbal socio-emotional communication. In children with cochlear implants (CIs), quality of life (QoL) is affected, but this can be related to the ability to recognize emotions in a voice rather than speech comprehension alone. In this manuscript, we describe a family of new methods, termed parameter-specific facial and vocal morphing. We propose that these provide novel perspectives for assessing sensory determinants of human communication, but also for enhancing socio-emotional communication and QoL in the context of sensory handicaps, via training with digitally enhanced, caricatured stimuli. Based on promising initial results with various target groups including people with age-related macular degeneration, people with low abilities to recognize faces, older people, and adult CI users, we discuss chances and challenges for perceptual training interventions for young CI users based on enhanced auditory stimuli, as well as perspectives for CI sound processing technology.

An integrative framework of early socio-emotional competencies: cognition, regulation and communication

Currently there is no consensus on what is the socio-emotional development, what are its components and path of progress, hindering the progress of transdisciplinary research and the development of evaluation and intervention methods in public policies. The literature about socio-emotional development is extensively reviewed, offering a theoretical model that identified three principal socio-emotional competencies: (a) socio-emotional cognition: composed by the attention and interpretation of social situations; (b) emotion regulation: composed by the emotion modulation and impulse control; (c) socio-emotional communication: composed by verbal and no verbal communication with others.

Real-Life Social-Skills Training and Motor-Skills Training in Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Con-Tatto Project Walking Down the Francigena Route.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with an early onset and a genetic and epigenetic component. ASD is characterized by deficits in socio-emotional reciprocity, impaired verbal and non-verbal communication skills, and specific difficulties in developing and maintaining adequate social relationships with peers. Indeed, restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities are required by DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. Autistic people usually need an unchanging environment (or in any case predictable and stable) and may have hypo- or hyper-sensitivity to sensory inputs. The onset of clinical symptoms occurs during the early years of life. Social skills competence is a significant therapeutic aim to be pursued when addressing ASD core symptoms. Several considerable motor difficulties (87%) in people with autism spectrum disorder in adulthood have been found. The Con-tatto project developed a project addressing social, physical, and mental health difficulties in real-life walking down the Francigena route for 9 days with 12 autistic people, by (1) Implementing daily sessions of social skills training program whose abilities were addressed to be immediately generalized and used throughout the day. (2) Educational movement and walking activity programs were led by a fitness coach. (3) The creation of walking peers’ social community with a strong and relevant impact on adults with ASD social life respecting every person’s individuality. (4) Provision of social reinforcers to reduce the stigma of people with autism and the experienced perception of low self-esteem, especially when they are bullied.

“You Feel Like You Kind of Walk Between the Two Worlds”: A Participatory Study Exploring How Technology Can Support Emotion Regulation for Autistic People

An increasing amount of technological solutions aiming to support emotion regulation are being developed for Autistic people. However, there remains a lack of understanding of user needs, and design factors which has led to poor usability and varied success. Furthermore, studies assessing the feasibility of emotion regulation technology via physiological signals for autistic people are increasingly showing promise, yet to date there has been no exploration of views from the autistic community on the benefits/challenges such technology may present in practice. Focus groups with autistic people and their allies were conducted to gain insight into experiences and expectations of technological supports aimed at supporting emotion regulation. Reflexive thematic analysis generated three themes: (1) communication challenges (2) views on emotion regulation technology (3) ‘how’ technology is implemented. Results provide meaningful insight into the socio-emotional communication challenges faced by autistic people, and explore the expectations of technology aimed at supporting emotion regulation.

Assessing genetic counselor communication in response to virtual, asynchronous simulated video prompts.

Online methods of teaching and assessing communication skills meet not only the need for remote education during the COVID-19 pandemic but also future demand for flexible training methods. This study aimed to explore the utility of standardized video prompts intended to elicit samples of genetic counselors' (GCs') interpersonal, psychosocial, and counseling skills by describing variation in GCs' socioemotional communication during their responses to a series of videotaped communication challenges. We analyzed the previously recorded communication of 43 GCs responding to a set of videotaped simulated client prompts related to a cancer or prenatal counseling session. We applied the Roter Interaction Analysis System to the prompts and GCs' responses, focusing on the proportion of socioemotional content as an indicator of interpersonal, psychosocial, and counseling skill use. We analyzed the responses of 21 GCs to the cancer prompts and 22 GCs to the prenatal prompts. Two-sample t tests explored differences in the proportion of socioemotional content in GCs' responses to prompts within and across the two scenarios. Overall, socioemotional statements accounted for 31% (SD=8%) of all GC statements in response to the prenatal prompts and 36% (SD=9%) of statements in response to the cancer prompts (Bonferroni-adjusted p=.49). The proportion of socioemotional communication in individual prompt responses varied from 4% (SD=12%) to 76% (SD=26%) across the cancer prompt series and 10% (SD=13%) to 76% (SD=30%) across the prenatal prompt series. Across the two scenarios, two of 10 matched prompts showed significant differences in the proportion of GCs' socioemotional content of the prompt responses (p's<0.001). These differences appear related to differences in the socioemotional nature of the prompts. These findings inform online methods of communication assessment that are useful during restrictions to in-person learning due to COVID-19, as well as future hybrid training and research efforts.

Setting the Stage: Initial Socio-Emotional Communication and Performance in Cross-Functional Teams

Effective cross-functional integration is characterized by complex interactions during project work in supply chain management. We draw from a socio-emotional communication framework and team development models to carve out that socio-emotional communication constitutes a double-edged sword in setting the stage for team performance development. Specifically, in the light of unequivocal prior research findings regarding this topic, we pose the question of whether team members’ reactions to socio-emotional statements may be the reason that some cross-functional teams succeed and others fail. We used sophisticated interaction coding to capture early communication patterns of 33 teams (N = 134) as well as their performance development over six meetings of a supply chain simulation. Using latent growth modeling, we found that the amount of socio-emotional communication in the first meeting negatively impacts overall team performance. However, running sequential analytical models revealed that unsuccessful teams reacted upon socio-emotional communication with dysfunctional remarks and task-oriented contributions, while successful teams only showed task-oriented reactions, and more profoundly increased team performance over different rounds. Operations managers should be sensitized about the possible detrimental effects of unthoughtful handling of socio-emotional chitchat in cross-functional teams.

Knowledge co-creation for a complex concept on a digital platform

This study examines temporary expert group knowledge co-creation on digital platforms. Our ethnographic study focuses on digital organizing and more specifically on temporary expert team knowledge co-creation on a digital platform. Based on the rich data from micro-level digital traces, we study how a complex concept is co-designed. Temporary team’s knowledge co-creation process is supported by project leads’ weaving work and co-created digital scaffolds. The emerging concept design is a result of the cyclical knowledge co-creation process where experts apply their personal knowledge in repeating cycles leading to complex concept co-design. Experts share their personal knowledge by inspiring and informing others with the help of visual artifacts. Visual artifacts become boundary objects when others engage in a digital dialogue through articulating, asking and challenging the knowledge co-creation process supported by socio-emotional communication. Research contributes to digital organizing of expertise by providing a nuanced understanding of the knowledge co-creation process and the use of digital artifacts as boundary objects in asynchronous collaboration for complex problem solving.

Doktorlar İçin İletişim Bir Reçete midir? İletişim Yeterliliği ve Güven Arasındaki İlişki: Meme Hastaları Üzerine Bir Araştırma

Although significant studies have been conducted in the field of health communication in terms of communication competence, its role on trust in the radiology department needs further exploration. The communication skills of radiologists are considered an important indicator of trust. Therefore, the study aims to research the effect of communication competence on trust. With this aim the current study seeks to contribute to health communication literature by researching the patients’ perceived communication competence of doctors as a determining factor that develop trust in the radiology department. The research was carried out between December 2019 and March 2020 using a questionnaire form with 321 breast patients in the radiology department in a public health institution in Antalya, Turkey. The results of the study refer that communication competence as a whole concept has a strong positive and statistically significant effect on trust. When the dimensions of communication competence are investigated, it is found that socioemotional communication is the only dimension that has a strong effect on the formation of trust among communication competence.

EMOTION ANALYSIS USING SIGNAL AND IMAGE PROCESSING APPROACH BY IMPLEMENTING DEEP NEURAL NETWORK

Emotion recognition is important in human communication and to achieve a complete interaction between humans and machines. In medical applications, emotion recognition is used to assist the children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD to improve their socio-emotional communication, helps doctors with diagnosis of diseases such as depression and dementia and also helps the caretakers of older patients to monitor their well-being. This paper discusses the application of feature level fusion of speech and facial expressions of different emotions such as neutral, happy, sad, angry, surprise, fearful and disgust. Also, to explore how best to build the deep learning networks to classify the emotions independently and jointly from these two modalities. VGG-model is utilized to extract features from facial images, and spectral features are extracted from speech signals. Further, feature level fusion technique is adopted to fuse the features extracted from the two modalities. Principal Component Analysis (PCA is implemented to choose the significant features. The proposed method achieved a maximum score of 90% on training set and 82% on validation set. The recognition rate in case of multimodal data improved greatly when compared to unimodal system. The multimodal system gave an improvement of 9% compared to the performance of the system based on speech. Thus, result shows that the proposed Multimodal Emotion Recognition (MER outperform the unimodal emotion recognition system.

Influencia de la diversidad lingüística en la comunicación de equipos virtuales: Superando barreras y obteniendo beneficios

This qualitative, exploratory study analyzes the impact of language diversity on task-based and socio-emotional communication processes in multilingual virtual teams. The results highlight keys to effective communication for both completing team tasks and building relationships: 1) propose the use of a functional language for efficiency, but encourage supporting languages for building rapport, 2) use diverse communication channels to adapt to the context, message and interlocutors, but emphasize instant messaging for groups with high language diversity, and 3) identify language nodes as key facilitators of communication, understanding and rapport building within teams.

Emotion and Interaction Control: A Motive-Based Approach to Media Choice in Socio-Emotional Communication

A large part of everyday communication is mediated by technology, with a constantly growing number of choices. Accordingly, how people choose between different communication media is a long-standing research question. However, while prominent media theories focus on how media characteristics affect communication performance, the underlying psychological motives of media choice and how different technologies comply with these are less considered. We propose a theoretical framework that links media characteristics with peoples’ intentions to influence communication and present a qualitative study on reasons for media choice in socio-emotional situations. An analysis through the lens of the framework illustrates how users employ media to establish control over the interactional speed and emotional intensity of communication and thereby regulate their communication experience. Besides an advanced theoretical understanding, the present analysis provides a basis for a conscious design of communication media, to deliberately shape the way people interact with technology and each other.

Exploring the Associations of Chronically Ill Patients’ Listening Styles and Medical Communication Competence in Patient–Doctor Interactions

Listening skills are invaluable in health care settings to reduce medical errors and miscommunications, and to facilitate health care interactions and patient–physician relationships. The aim of this study was to explore the relationships between patients’ listening styles and the four components of medical communication competence. Regression analyses were used to examine and identify the associations between listening styles and medical communication competence among 522 self-identified chronically ill patients. Findings revealed associations between the four listening styles, information giving, information seeking, information verifying, and socioemotional communication. Implications suggest listening style preferences may affect patients’ medical communication competence in medical consultation visits.

Hormonal and modality specific effects on males’ emotion recognition ability

Successful emotion recognition is a key component of human socio-emotional communication skills. However, little is known about the factors impacting males’ accuracy in emotion recognition tasks. This pre-registered study examined potential candidates, focusing on the modality of stimulus presentation, emotion category and individual baseline hormone levels. In an additional exploratory analysis, we examined the association of testosterone x cortisol interaction with recognition accuracy and reaction times. We obtained accuracy and reaction time scores from 282 males who categorized voice, face and voice-face stimuli for nonverbal emotional content. Results showed that recognition accuracy was significantly higher in the audio-visual than in the auditory or visual modality. While Spearman’s rank correlations showed no significant association of testosterone (T) with recognition accuracy or with response times for specific emotions, the logistic and linear regression models uncovered some evidence for a positive association between T and recognition accuracy as well as between cortisol (C) and reaction time. In addition, the overall effect size of T by C interaction with recognition accuracy and reaction time was significant, but small. Our results establish that audio-visual congruent stimuli enhance recognition accuracy and provide novel empirical support by showing that the interaction of testosterone and cortisol relates to males’ accuracy and response times in emotion recognition tasks.

Received Cradling Bias During the First Year of Life: A Retrospective Study on Children With Typical and Atypical Development.

A population-level left cradling bias exists whereby 60–90% of mothers hold their infants on the left side. This left biased positioning appears to be mutually beneficial to both the mother and the baby's brain organization for processing of socio-emotional stimuli. Previous research connected cradling asymmetries and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), entailing impairment in socio-communicative relationships and characterized by an early hypo-lateralization of brain functions. In this explorative study, we aimed to provide a contribution to the retrospective investigations by looking for early behavioral markers of neurodevelopmental disorders such as ASD. We hypothesized that an atypical trajectory in maternal cradling might be one of the possible signs of an interference in mother-infant socio-emotional communication, and thus of potential neurodevelopmental dysfunctions. To this aim, we examined photos depicting mother-child early cradling interactions by consulting family albums of 27 children later diagnosed with ASD and 63 typically developing children. As regards the first half of the first year of life, no differences were shown between maternal cradling-side preferences in typical and ASD groups, both exhibiting the left-cradling bias in the 0–3 months period, but not in the 3–6 months period. However, our results show dissimilar patterns of cradling preferences during the second half of the first year of life. In particular, the absence of left-cradling shown in typical mothers was not observed in ASD mothers, who exhibited a significant left-cradling bias in the 6–12 months age group. This difference might reflect the fact that mother-infant relationship involving children later diagnosed with ASD might remain “basic” because mothers experience a lack of social activity in such children. Alternatively, it may reflect the overstimulation in which mothers try to engage infants in response to their lack of responsiveness and social initiative. However, further investigations are needed both to distinguish between these two possibilities and to define the role of early typical and reversed cradling experiences on neurodevelopment.

Serotonin transporter deficiency alters socioemotional ultrasonic communication in rats

It has been widely established that serotonin plays important role in the regulation of emotional and social behaviour. Rodents with a genetic deletion of the serotonin reuptake transporter (SERT) are used as a model to study lifelong consequences of increased extracellular 5‐HT levels due to its impaired reuptake. SERT knock-out (SERT-KO) mice and rats consistently showed anxiety-like symptoms and social deficits. Nevertheless, the impact of SERT deletion on socioemotional ultrasonic communication has not been addressed. Here we investigated the impact of lifelong serotonin abundance on ultrasonic vocalisation accompanying social interactions and open field exploration in rats. SERT-KO rats displayed reduced overall duration of social contacts, but increased time spent on following the conspecific. The altered pattern of social behaviour in SERT-KO rats was accompanied by the structural changes in ultrasonic vocalisations, as they differed from their controls in distribution of call categories. Moreover, SERT deletion resulted in anxiety-like behaviours assessed in the open field test. Their anxious phenotype resulted in a lower tendency to emit appetitive 50-kHz calls during novelty exploration. The present study demonstrates that genetic deletion of SERT not only leads to the deficits in social interaction and increased anxiety but also affects ultrasonic communication.

The association between received maternal cradling and neurodevelopment: Is left better?

The vast majority of women (60–90%) hold infants on their left side. Such a population-level lateral bias has been shown to improve the processing of socio-emotional stimuli in both the woman and the baby. Recently, some studies related cradling lateralization and Autism Spectrum Disorders (which entail socio-communicative deficits and a reduction of the typical lateralization of brain functions), raising the possibility that the asymmetrical cradling behavior experienced during infanthood might be related to the infant’s neurodevelopment. Any progress made towards earlier diagnoses could significantly increase the chance of successful intervention for these patients. We here suggest that a wide retrospective investigation on family photo albums and home movies of children diagnosed with Autism might provide useful data about early behavioral signs of this condition. We hypothesize that an atypical trajectory in maternal cradling might be one of the early signs of interference in dyadic socio-emotional communication, and thus of potential neurodevelopmental dysfunctions.

Facilitating the Expression of Emotions by Alleged Victims of Child Abuse During Investigative Interviews Using the Revised NICHD Protocol.

Children's testimony is often critical to the initiation of legal proceedings in abuse cases. In forensic interviews, the expression of emotions can powerfully enhance both the quality of children's statements and perceptions that their statements are coherent and credible. However, children rarely express their emotions when reporting abusive events. The Revised The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Protocol (RP) was designed to emphasize socioemotional communication during forensic interviews and thus should be associated with more extensive and diverse expressions of emotions by alleged victims of abuse. The present study focused on forensic interviews (178 using the Revised and 100 using the Standard NICHD Protocol) with victims of physical child abuse whose allegations were corroborated using independent evidence. Detailed content coding showed that the RP was associated with the expression of more different emotions, more expression of abuse-related emotions, and more expression of emotions related to the interview context. Emotional expressiveness was associated with increased informativeness, and the association between the type of protocol and informativeness was fully mediated by emotional expressiveness. These results suggest that the Revised Protocol facilitates the expression of emotions by alleged victims of abuse in a way that enhances the value of children's testimony in multiple ways.

Interaction patterns of physical education teachers in a professional learning community

ABSTRACTBackground: In both general education and physical education literature, considerable attention is paid to identifying the effectiveness of communities of practice (CoPs). This literature tends to be more qualitative in nature with less research examining the quantitative nature of interactions in CoPs through direct observation.Purpose: This study examined the ways teachers interact within a newly-developed community (LC) /CoP to understand how conversations evolve; how teachers question, challenge, and/or encourage one another to grow professionally in a learning community.Theoretical Framework: Situated learning perspectives provide a powerful framework for examining teacher learning and facilitation of teacher development.Method: Bales’s Interaction Process Analysis Tool (IPA) was selected for analyzing the socio-emotional and task-oriented communication between members of the LC/CoP. Six physical education teachers (four female, two male) and a facilitator, representing the university, participated in LC/CoP meetings designed in collaboration between teachers and the facilitator. The data source was audio-taped transcripts taken of teacher interactions during six weeks of LC/CoP meetings.Findings: Results revealed three main interactive patterns that emerged from analysis of participant interactions during the six LC/CoP meetings. These patterns were; 1) Variable member interactions; 2) Member roles; and 3) Personal interaction pattern development. By coding participant interactions as they occur allowed us to understand and analyze directly what and how LC/CoP members actually talked at the initial stages of community development.Conclusion: The contribution of this study is to use an interaction analysis tool to conceptualize the communicative actions that emerge through a LC/CoP and provide practical insight into the gap in the literature relative to how conversations evolve in a CoP; how teachers question, challenge, and/or encourage one another to grow professionally. Ultimately linking an interactive analysis tool with a well-structured qualitative research component to provide participant voice, feelings and behaviours would provide more robust rusults.