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Paula Atienza

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In Education

The use of robots to improve nonverbal communication in class. Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Robot lecture for enhancing presentation in lecture” by Ishino, T.; Goto, M. y Kashihara, A. (2022), in which authors carry out an experiment to know whether the use of robots with specialized skills in nonverbal communication is positive and beneficial for the learning process of students in class.

For some years now, the use of robots, especially small ones, has been spreading in various contexts such as care, nursing, education, guidance, hospitality… and moreover, people’s interest in implementing robots in some of these areas is growing exponentially, especially in education. 

In this article, authors focus on the use of communication robots to give lectures or short lessons in small classes. 

In a lecture, it is generally very important to present the contents with slides to support the oral presentation, so that a better and easier understanding by the students is achieved. This requires teachers to control the students’ attention, both to the slides and to the oral presentation, and this must be done by means of many non-verbal elements: the eyes, gestures, paralanguage, etcetera. 

For example, if teachers want to draw students’ attention to an important point on a particular slide, they should turn their face towards the presentation and point with a direct gesture simultaneously. 

On the other hand, nonverbal behavior that is histrionic, excessive, unnecessary, would prevent students from keeping their attention on understanding the content. Consequently, it is essential for teachers or lecture speakers to have some training in nonverbal communication. 

However, even for experienced communicators, it is not so easy to make proper use of the learned tools of nonverbal communication and maintain it throughout the lecture. And if we bear in mind that there are also inexperienced people who do not know the effective techniques in this type of situation, the matter becomes more complex. 

Those with less experience tend to concentrate more on oral explanation and leave aside non-verbal communication. As a result, the learning process for students will be more difficult. 

The authors propose the use of robots to give lectures, replacing human teachers. The aim in the experiment was to reproduce nonverbal behavior as adequate as possible for the students to pay attention to the most important contents of the lecture. 

The robot reproduced the presentation that was part of the supporting material of the lecture or class, and directed its face and gestures accordingly. 

The study compares the effectiveness of human-delivered and robot-delivered lectures in terms of student learning. 

The participants were 36 university students. Three different video lectures lasting 5-6 minutes were prepared. 

The obtained results reported that the robots had difficulties in performing accurate speaker behavior, due to their obvious limitations (they are not human beings), but their behavior was recognizable. 

In the case of a pointing gesture, performed by human teachers, it is required to point to precise locations. If it is imprecise, it can lead to confusion on the part of the students, and they will lose attention. The pointing gesture by a robot tends to be firmer, so students would pay immediate attention in the direction pointed. 

However, to make up for the possible shortcomings of robots in terms of gestures, the authors propose using laser pointers or visual effects on the slides.

As a point that also needs to be improved, the authors mention that the robot needs to recognize the learning and behavioral states in the classroom on the part of the students. For example, if there are people who feel that the lecture is difficult, the robot will have to present a different nonverbal behavior that helps to change this perception. 

The results are positive in terms of attention when it comes to lectures given by the robot, possibly because of the novelty factor, although it is also mentioned that they are short lectures and this can be a point in favor. For this reason, the authors propose the use of hybrid models where robots make the introductions to certain topics and human teachers explain the complex parts or those that require a less “technological” factor. 

In the future, authors intend to learn more about the applications of robots in the field of education. In the meantime, they invite other researchers to investigate the subject, in order to include more and more of this type of technology in our lives. 

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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In Emotions

Can facial expression help us know if a potential romantic partner is going to reject us? Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “In the name of love: can nonverbal communication serve as a predictor of Acceptance and Rejection of Potential Partners?”, by van den Eijnden, L.; van Telgen, T.; van Viersen, J. and Visser, T. (2022), in which authors carry out a couple of studies to know whether nonverbal communication in general and facial expression in particular, may help us predict if a potential romantic or sexual partner will reject us or not.

For many years, researchers have agreed that nonverbal communication plays a very important role in the process of sending and receiving messages by conveying relevant information that goes beyond words. 

Authors’ research focuses specifically on couples, because verbal communication is considered to be a fundamental factor in the transmission of messages and, therefore, of people’s emotions. Since love is based on emotions rather than rationality, it is reasonable to say that nonverbal communication may be especially relevant to love. 

Therefore, authors ask: to what extent does nonverbal communication serve as a predictor in choosing our partner?

To investigate this issue, authors use a Dutch television program, where a group of male farmers are looking for love and go on dates with different female candidates. The current research considers the facial expression that the man who is going to decide, shows before verbalizing his decision. 

Facial expressions are often the means through which many emotions are inferred. People tend to associate certain facial movements with certain emotions and, therefore, it is possible that the nonverbal signals shown on the face of the decision-maker may reveal his response.

One hypothesis of the authors is that, by observing the farmer, it is possible to predict the decision he is going to make before he communicates it.

On the other hand, it is important to find out which are the elements that make us deduce that the farmer will make one decision or another. In other words, which movements tip the balance towards rejection or acceptance. Authors consider four: 1) raising the eyebrows, 2) smiling, 3) nodding and 4) shaking the head. 

Raising the eyebrows has often been associated with sadness and anger, even surprise or fear, depending on the movement. 

Smiling, on the other hand, can express happiness, but there are many types of smiles, such as false, or sad.

Nodding and shaking the head are also important because they can convey agreement and attention or disagreement, reluctance, even anger….

Therefore, authors predict that these elements will be important predictors of acceptance or rejection of the potential partner. 

A total of 40 clips were analyzed where some of the male farmers featured in the program just before rejecting their female candidates.

Unlike expectations, the results did not show support for the idea that we can predict whether the farmer will reject or accept a female candidate. There was also no support for the expectation that facial cues play a role in predicting rejection or acceptance. 

One possible explanation is that visual cues are often subjective. For example, a smile may indicate that someone is happy, but sometimes it can also signal shyness or cynicism. Raising eyebrows can indicate multiple emotions, such as astonishment or concern, which makes it difficult to judge people’s emotional state. 

Therefore, it is especially important to take into account the context and other nonverbal communication channels, as one alone provides us with scarce and unreliable information. 

Authors suggest investigating with more participants in future studies, as well as classifying the videos: on the one hand, those in which the candidate accepts someone, on the other hand, those in which he or she rejects the person. In this way, facial expressions can be contrasted with each other. 

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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In Human Resources

The importance of communicative skills in the tourism sector. Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read
New travel destinations. Business tourism.

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Measuring the importance of communication skills in tourism”, by Tankovic, A. C.,; Kapes, J. and Benazic, D. (2022), in which authors carry out a study with college students to know the importance that different communication areas have for the future of tourism sector’s professionals. 

We know from numerous studies to date, that communication skills have been identified as one of the most important, even crucial, factors for modern businesses.

While it is important to have specialized professional knowledge to be effective in our work, research shows that having only technical skills has become insufficient to meet the challenges of today’s business environment.

Now, those who hire are not interested in people who only have specific skills for the position, but are also looking for other significant skills, the so-called “soft skills”. The term refers to interpersonal skills, dealing with people, attitudes that improve business efficiency and relationships.

Effective business communication is a prerequisite for the successful performance of any company. However, when it comes to tourism, the importance of communication is even greater, because in tourism it has a deeper meaning, vital for the success of the business, especially in the interaction between tourists and employees.

Recent research shows that hotel managers spend up to 80% of their workday communicating interpersonally with others. Their communication ability affects the job satisfaction of all their subordinates. Auditory communication skills involve the process of receiving, interpreting and responding to messages, being considered by most experts as the most important part of the business communication process.

Plus, something very interesting is that the skills required in tourism change over time. Due to technological advances, tourism is, today, a sector indissoluble from technology, which is why it requires digital skills from employees.

The need to understand, know and master non-verbal communication is also mentioned. For example, it is important to pay attention to the communicator’s physical characteristics, body movements, the expressed courtesy, facial expression…

Employees in tourism and hospitality must be carefully recruited, and must receive continuous training, because their communication skills are an important indicator when it comes to generating positive interaction with customers.

It is important to make the following distinction. While communication in tourism may primarily require external communication, internal communication helps reinforce employee satisfaction, which, in turn, affects guest satisfaction. Combining external and internal communication, you can achieve an interpersonal communication that involves everyone, through two-way channels, with direct personal contact, making all parties feel heard and, therefore, ensuring that everybody’s needs are met more frequently.

Authors realized that there was no previous body of research and literature on the different aspects of communication applied to tourism and considering all at once.

Thus, they distributed a questionnaire that assessed written, oral, listening, digital communication, and non-verbal communication skills. The questionnaire was sent to tourism students and completed between 2019 and 2020.

The findings revealed that written and oral communication skills are the prerequisite of business communication. As expected, auditory communication skills seem to have become an essential component of interpersonal communication, linked to the daily activity of companies and, furthermore, closely related to greater hierarchical responsibility.

On the other hand, digital communication skills refer to contemporary challenges beyond technical and computer skills, such as the processing of digital information that is received and its treatment.

Nonverbal communication skills have a very high reliability value for those surveyed, who mention the need to pay attention to signs such as: smiling when speaking, using gestures and certain body postures, wearing appropriate professional clothing, appearing confident, honest…

For future research, authors recommend focusing on the effect of the aforementioned communication skills on employability, entrepreneurial intent, or career development.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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In Emotions

Is it important for young people’s mental health to have a rich emotional vocabulary? Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Communication and Emotional Vocabulay; Relevance for Mental Health Among School-Age Youths”, by Rimehaug, T. y Karstad, S. B. (2022), in which authors carry out a study to know whether it is important for children’s and teenagers’ mental health to have a rich and quality emotional vocabulary. 

Through the different posts of this blog we have seen how nonverbal language is immensely important for communication to exist, and a correct understanding of it contributes to effective and satisfactory interactions.

But what about verbal behavior? How does it affect our relationships, our way of developing individually or collectively? How does it affect our mental health?

There is a widespread assumption that language is important to mental health in several ways: both because of the influence of language on human development, and because of the influence of mental health on our communication.

In other words, good language development is normally expected to be a protective factor against mental health problems since it contributes to, for example, having good social functioning or the ability to solve cognitive problems more easily.

However, language and communication can also increase the ability to ruminate, misunderstandings, social conflicts…

Unraveling which aspects of language and communication are the most important is something that is still in progress. But the aspects that are proposed as such, may be its variety and richness, as well as its complexity; the understanding of emotional concepts and expressions, or the understanding of social mechanisms and processes.

In spite of this, it has been shown that vocabulary, specifically emotional vocabulary, acts as a resource to contribute to the proper development of social function, by improving prosocial behavior, reducing the risk of victimization and rejection, etc.

Furthermore, emotional language can express emotions and inform us about the emotional reactions of others in social interaction; also listening carefully to our emotional speech, which can influence our emotions.

Therefore, both positive and negative mental health could be related to language and communication, and possibly more to emotional communication. Therefore, it is possible that a rich and nuanced emotional vocabulary could be beneficial for mental health, serving for emotional regulation and social support, although there is also the possibility of using language in ways that create or exaggerate mental health problems.

It has been shown that those who receive mental health interventions (psychotherapy) are able to change and improve their mental health through emotional understanding and communication skills, more than those who don’t receive psychotherapy. 

In psychotherapy, this is often referred to as “the talk cure.” In fact, language has played a very important role in psychotherapy from its beginnings until the recent advances in cognitive-behavioral therapy. This happens because psychotherapy often focuses on finding words and narratives that can express and clarify life experiences, even shape or reinterpret them.

In these processes, poor emotional language can be an obstacle, and for this reason it is something that develops as the sessions progress.

In the current study, authors focused specifically on the associations between positive and negative mental health (understanding the former as prosocial behaviors, and the latter as emotional or behavioral problems) and emotional vocabulary.

There are relatively few studies investigating the specific role of emotional vocabulary in mental health. Authors hypothesized that emotional vocabulary might be more important for mental health than general vocabulary, thus, they could be a specific resource beyond intelligence and communication skills.

The study used a free labeling task, in which a series of words and phrases were used to describe facial expressions commonly associated with emotions. 410 students between 10 and 16 years old participated, accompanied by their parents.

The results indicated that emotional vocabulary in youth between 10-16 years is not a general resource for mental health, and the same would apply to vocabulary in general.

However, pragmatic language, skills to communicate effectively, were negatively associated with behavior problems and hyperactivity, while the same was not true for emotional and social problems.

Pragmatic skills were also positively associated with prosocial behavior, indicating that they are a resource factor for positive aspects of mental health.

In short, emotional vocabulary did not show a stronger association with mental health than general vocabulary, but pragmatic skills, in part, did.

The suggestion is that expanding emotional vocabulary per se is unlikely to improve mental health unless vocabulary expansion is integrated with improvements in social communication.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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In Emotions

Is there any important indicator to evaluate the veracity of children’s statements in forensic interviews? Forensic Science Club

By 5 Mins Read
African american girl crying during therapy session with child psychologist

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication  Blog, this week we present the paper “Causal indicators for assessing the truthfulness of child speech in forensic interviews”, by Durante, Z.; Ardulov, V.; Kumar, M.; Gongola, J.; Lyon, T. and Narayanan, S. (2022), in which authors carry out a study to identify any factor that is relevant to discern between true and false declarations when it’s about forensic interviews to children. 

In other articles we have seen how interviews are carried out to obtain testimony in controlled settings when it comes to legal proceedings and investigations involving children who may have been victims or witnesses of a crime.

The child is in a stage of human life in which he/she is especially vulnerable, but, in addition, he/she can be influenced more easily, even trained or forced to admit or omit false information.

That is, the same developmental attributes that make children more vulnerable also make their testimony susceptible to manipulation.

To address these issues, legal experts have developed a basic framework for properly conducting interviews, which should be carried out by professionals trained in the field.

The process begins with relationship building, where innocent open questions predominate to help put the child at ease. Afterwards, the interviewer moves on to a somewhat more critical part, during which she obtains memories, directing questions, also open, towards the topic of interest.

Because of all that is at stake, legal experts and psychologists are dedicated to finding factors that indicate whether a child is prepared to disclose information and whether the information disclosed by the child is true or false.

A meta-analysis of studies conducted a few years ago demonstrates the ability of adults to detect children’s lies, with an overall accuracy rate of 54%, which only increased to 59% when trained people were asked. These are not very high percentages.

This is thought to happen because adults tend to have a bias towards believing that a child’s statement is always true.

The hypothesis underlying the authors’ study is that the way children adapt their behavior in response to an interviewer’s behavior, is a more informative sign of deception than the behavior itself.

To combat the difficulties in discerning between truth and deceit in an interview with children, the protocols are administered by a trained professional to obtain reliable testimonies. These interviews are designed to minimize secondary victimization and maximize the retrieval of valuable information without coercion or leading questions.

When that first contact is established, the interviewer asks about innocuous topics so that the child feels comfortable talking; then there will be questions that relate directly to the investigation, without pressuring the child to reveal specific details.

Deception detection studies have been largely limited to adult subjects, using video, audio, or text. Previous work in this area with children is usually done on linguistic characteristics of the interview.

Rather, this article uses acoustic features and considers the child’s coordination and behavior in terms of the interviewer’s, to better understand the child’s dynamics and personality in the interview.

To do this, approximately 200 interviews were conducted, each one with a child, conducted by two experienced interviewers.

The session begins with the child and one of the interviewers, in a room full of toys. The interviewer begins to engage with the child, but one of the toys breaks and a transgression happens. This interviewer tells the child that a different interviewer will come in to ask him/her some questions, and adds that he/she should not say anything about the broken toy to avoid getting into trouble.

The second interviewer follows the basic protocol, first building a relationship of trust with the child and then talking to him/her about the toy so that he/she tells him what has happened to it.

It seems that the best predictor of whether or not a child is telling the truth is his/her level of imagination. There is a very important relationship between children’s and interviewers’ use of vivid language that evokes clear mental images.

Children who plan to omit that an occurred transgression choose their language more carefully, severely that of the interviewer. Therefore, the child becomes more or less vague in his/her descriptions, depending on the level of specificity the interviewer is using.

In contrast, if a boy/girl is honest, he/she will not modify his/her behavior based on the interviewer’s discourse.

This relationship suggests that interview protocols require interviewers to modulate imaginative levels in their language, in order to more reliably track and differentiate between true and false testimonies.

In the future, dynamic systems models that incorporate the interaction of the speaker and the child’s behavior may provide more information and improve accuracy.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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In Emotions

Mental health and deception detection: are we confusing cues of low credibility with atypical behavior of people with mental conditions? Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Atypical behaviors found in some mental health conditions negatively affect judgements of deception and credibility” by Lim, A.; Young, R. L. and Brewer, N. (2022), in which authors carry out a study to examine some visible behaviors that we associate with an unbelievable speech, but also, are behaviors that people with some mental conditions can present. 

There is a general belief that what people say does not matter as much as their behavior when they say it, since it could indicate guilt, deception, regret…, etc.

In a 2006 study, 58 participants were asked when they knew someone was lying. The most common answers were: when there is an aversion to the gaze, incoherence, exaggerated body movements, certain facial expressions…

Only one of the elements was related to the content of the message: the inconsistency. Which leads us to think that we focus much more on non-verbal elements than on verbal ones, an idea consistent with numerous previous studies on the subject.

While the use of unreliable cues in lie detection is concerning in itself, it is likely to be problematic for people who have a disability or mental health condition as well.

For example, some people with social anxiety and social communication disorders have difficulty maintaining eye contact, which, rather than being a guilt avoidance mechanism, is more related to fear of social interaction.

On the other hand, repetitive body movements may be behaviors of people with neurodevelopmental disorders or autism spectrum disorders.

However, to an observer who doesn’t know much about the subject, these behaviors can be misinterpreted as signs of nervousness or guilt.

Another indicator of trustworthiness is emotional expressions. For example, there are studies that show that, in a trial, both victims and defendants are perceived as more credible when they show negative emotions (such as crying) rather than neutral (flat affect) or positive emotions (smiles).

Despite the fact that many studies have pointed out that it is necessary to pay attention to verbal signals especially, the stereotype that the most important are the non-verbal ones is very widespread, even for professionals such as police or judges.

This can be explained by attribution theory, which is based on the premise that individuals inherently seek to understand and explain observed behaviors, thus attributing a cause to the behavior.

In this study, authors examine the effect of four cues commonly associated with lying: gaze aversion, repetitive body movements, monologues, and flat affect. These behaviors are selected because they are associated with lying and also because they often appear in people with mental health problems.

It was hypothesized that individuals displaying these behaviors would be perceived as more liars and less credible.

The total sample was a total of 392 people of legal age, gathered through online tools.

They were shown a video of a game, in which one person had to choose whether or not to steal a small amount of money and then convince another person that they had or had not. If they got away with it, they got $50; if not, only 10$. The people in these videos were professional actors with a standardized script.

Results revealed significant effects of repetitive body movements and monologues on perceived deception, and significant effects of flat affect on credibility. It is important, as it could have important practical indications for people who often show these behaviors, for example, people with schizophrenia or mood disorders, people with neurodevelopmental disorders, autism spectrum, among others.

However, contrary to expectations, and also contrary to previous studies, gaze aversion did not have a significant effect on judgments of deception or credibility. It is possible that this happened because in this study this trait was studied individually, while in most studies it is interpreted within a context or accompanied by other behaviors that can give strength to the “lie effect”.

One limitation of the study is that it was not conducted with people with mental health conditions, so authors recommend the direct participation of these populations.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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In Emotions

Is it useful to consider a person’s ethnic group when it comes to analyzing his/her facial expression? Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Racial Identity-Aware Facial Expression Recognition Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks”, by Sohail, M.; Ali, G.; Rashid, J.; Ahmad, I.; Almotiri, S. H.; AlGhamdi, M. A.; Nagra, A. A. and Masood, K. (2021), in which authors investigate the possibility of including, thanks to a software, the ability to consider ethnic groups when it comes to analyzing facial expressions. 

Because manual analysis of facial expression is sometimes kind of time-consuming, different software is being used more and more to automate the process. However, authors wonder, do they consider the differences between ethnic groups and their faces?

The objective of a facial expression recognition system is to recognize the emotions that they show, because there are a series of muscular movements of the face that are associated with certain emotions and can make us infer what a person feels.

These emotions are usually happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear and disgust, although contempt or neutral expression are sometimes included.

Although many studies have focused on facial expression recognition using static images, this can be very difficult for three reasons, as authors explain.

First, because the variations in facial structure between subjects from different cultures make the classification task pretty complex in some cases.

Second, because the similarity between expressions may be significant, and therefore a challenge to recognize each one accurately.

Lastly, different subjects may present variations in the expression of their emotions due to their facial appearance and their biometric forms.

In general, authors consider that the variability of facial structure between cultures could lead to incorrect recognition of facial expression because the image of an emotion in one culture may be different from the image of the same emotion in another culture. For example, it is known that members of different cultures can express levels of arousal to an emotion that won’t appear in another culture.

Therefore, authors believe that including a description of racial identity in automated facial recognition software models would make the process more reliable.

Specifically, authors develop in this work a new deep learning technique: the Racial Identity Aware Network (RIA-Net) learns facial expressions from images and extracts racial identity features from a previously trained racial identity network (RI-Net). -Net). The latter is trained using multicultural data from Japanese, Taiwanese, American, Caucasian, Moroccan people…

In addition, they use a model based on convolution neural networks, which has previously been successfully used by experts such as Pons and Masip, for facial expression recognition.

Authors think that it is very important to consider ethnic. It has been shown that the representation of facial expression is not only influenced by muscular deformation of the facial structure, but also by many other social factors such as culture, geography, or ethnic group.

How was the study carried out? Well, a recognition system for facial expressions associated with seven emotions was proposed. It knew sadness, happiness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust and neutral emotion.

Then, five different cultures were considered: Moroccan, Caucasian, Taiwanese, American and Japanese. To do this, images from country-specific databases with faces of native people were extracted.

The findings show, in the first place, that the highest percentage of misunderstanding arises among the emotions of anger, sadness and fear, the opposite occurring with happiness and surprise, where there were 100% correct answers.

The proposed method achieved an accuracy of 97%. Under the same conditions, without using racial identity traits, the accuracy dropped to 93.28%. These results show that the use of racial identity traits in the recognition of facial expressions significantly improves the results.

The current pandemic situation has made online communication much more common. In addition, globalization has facilitated communication between people from different parts of the world and, therefore, different cultures. Facial expressions play a very important role in this regard, so it is especially important to pay attention to multiculturalism when it comes to identifying emotions through the face.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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In Emotions

Comparison between the Indian and the British population: who are more affectionate with babies? Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “A comparison of Non-verbal Maternal Care of Male and Female Infants in India and the United Kingdom: The Parent-Infant Caregiving Touch Scale in Two Cultures”, by Hodsoll, J.; Pickles, A.; Bozicevic, L.; Supraja, T. A.; Hill, J.; Chandra, P. S. and Sharp, H. (2022), in which authors carry out two simultaneous studies, one in India and other in UK, to discover if there are any differences regarding how mothers behavior with their babies, focusing on “the loving touch”.

A mother’s care for her children is an essential characteristic for the correct development of mammals. Not only to guarantee their survival through their food and nutrition, but also for their physiological, cognitive, social and emotional development.

Care includes, in general terms, food, care for physical health, sensory and intellectual stimulation, security, emotional warmth and affection, comfort when in distress, and also the response to the needs and communications of the babies.

Although many of these aspects have been studied in depth, the role of touch has received very little attention and the results in this regard are much more limited.

In this paper, authors carry out a cross-cultural study to find out if there are differences in how Indian mothers and British mothers care for their children, specifically, when it comes to the so-called “loving touch”.

Why the “loving touch”? Because, in humans, touch-based care has many times been associated with benefits for babies. Skin-to-skin contact from early in the baby’s life in preterm infants has been associated with positive physiological outcomes for them.

It has also been shown to facilitate mother-infant interaction, making it more receptive and synchronous. It seems to support the development of emotional and cognitive skills in children, such as sustained attention or general control.

Specifically, early parental touch has a positive impact on the infant’s early behavior and physiological response to social stress, including her preschool emotional development.

Therefore, there is no doubt that touch is an important sensory exposure for babies that can shape their development.

As we already know, there are different traditions depending on the country in which we are and the behavior of care was not going to be less.

Several studies have examined early maternal sensitivity in certain cultures, and there is some debate, with some experts arguing that there is no universality of maternal sensitivity.

On the other hand, there are other experts who do support the universality of maternal sensitivity and affirm that its manifestations vary between cultures.

The truth is that care responses can be found from mother to child in all cultures, but they are different. For example, cross-national studies have shown that when Western mothers interact with their babies, they use more proximal behaviors: caressing or patting, for example. They also use distant behaviors, such as talking, looking, or smiling. But in other non-Western cultures, such as India, the baby is massaged daily.

On the other hand, authors were interested in exploring whether there was any variation in the care received by the baby depending on whether he/she was a boy or a girl. In some South Asian populations, boys are favored over girls, and this preference might be relevant to the mothers themselves. In fact, India has the most abnormal levels of female excess mortality in the world in girls aged 1-4 years.

Authors hypothesized that boys would receive greater tactile attention compared to girls.

In the Indian context, a total of 395 mothers participated, and in the United Kingdom, 874. The Parent-Infant Caregiving Touch Scale (PICTS) was produced, which contains questions such as: how often does the mother touch her baby’s back, head , your tummy, arms or legs.

The findings were clear: the rate of reported early caresses in the UK is higher than in India, but there was no difference regarding the sex of the babies.

That is to say, on the one hand, it seems that cultural differences are significant and in India it is much more common to practice daily baby massages than caress, unlike in the United Kingdom. On the other hand, it seems that sexual discrimination is experiencing a certain decrease.

Authors mention that this article may serve to examine in the future if the protective effects that are supposed to appear after these care behaviors are similar for children in India and the United Kingdom, seeing that the care practices are different.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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In Emotions

Music and body movement: their influence on romantic dates. Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Body sway predicts romantic interest in speed dating” by Chang, A.; Kragness, H. E.; Tsou, W.; Bosnyak, D. J.; Thiede, A. and Trainor, L. J. (2021), in which authors organize a series of speed dates to study how music and body movements influence the participants’ romantic interests.

Love relationships are one of the most essential social bonds for humans and, in addition, they are fundamental for society.

Because of this, many previous studies have investigated the social and personality factors that are related to the formation and maintenance of these relationships, as well as the happiness and outcomes of them.

One of the aspects that has caught most of the attention of experts and also the general public is the first moment of this bond, that is, the origin, the initial romantic interest. To investigate this, speed dating has been used, which is a process in which people have a series of dates lasting a few minutes with potential romantic partners. The reason for the validity of this method is that it allows good experimental manipulation, in addition to the fact that it has the approval of the scientific community.

However, the role of interpersonal interaction and nonverbal behavior in early romantic interest has rarely been studied scientifically, despite being seen as a crucial factor for individuals.

In this particular article, authors focus on the swaying of the body, the interactive body movements of potential partners involved in speed dating, and how these relate to romantic interest.

Body balance is part of people’s nonverbal behavior and serves as an indicator of interactions in many settings. People rarely sit and stay completely still, they rather make subtle head and body movements, usually unconsciously. 

When two or more people are having a conversation, are in a psychotherapy session, or are playing music at the same time, their body swings tend to be coupled.

We have already mentioned that what is studied in this article is the body balance and its relationship with the initial romantic interest. Well, to evaluate it, the coupling ratios between the balance of one person and the other were examined, throughout the 4 minutes that each appointment took place.

In addition, an interesting factor was taken into account: music. Dating environments often include music in the background, yet the effect of music on early romance has rarely been studied.

Many places where people experience romantic interactions, such as restaurants, bars, and parties, have music. It is known that it drives both intentional and unconscious movements, especially styles like soul, funk or jazz, which have a high level of  “groove”. The “groove” would be the instinct that makes us move and that is born from the musical influence.

Empirical studies have shown that certain types of music promote the swaying of the body, therefore, authors hypothesized that musical rhythm could affect initial romantic interest by improving the coupling of the body sway.

To investigate all this, 55 participants were gathered. There were two dating sessions between men and women of legal age. Different background music was selected for each session. Face-to-face contact between potential partners prior to dates was minimized, and participants were instructed to have conversations and interactions only with their partner at the table. After each date, each participant completed a questionnaire about his/her partner.

Body sway directional coupling was found to predict interest in romantic relationships in the long term, but not in the short term. Specifically, participants seemed to have a greater interest in a long-term relationship if their sway dynamics predicted better their potential partner’s body sway.

This is consistent with previous studies that show that interest in short-term relationships is primarily associated with attractiveness, whereas interest in long-term relationships is associated with personality and socially attractive characteristics, such as intelligence, honesty and warmth.

Authors propose the idea that the coupling of body sway reflects the quality of communication in the couple and reveals the degree of compatible personality characteristics.

On the other hand, regarding music, it is shown that it promotes romantic interest during speed dating, which motivates future research on this topic. However, no evidence was found about music being related to greater sway coupling, which was not consistent with the hypothesis. But it is important to mention that other previous studies show that music with “groove” promotes the incorporation of movement to the interaction and therefore it is necessary to delve into whether it benefits the emergence of romantic bonds.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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Are people with antisocial personality disease or psychopathic personality able to recognize and copy facial expressions in the same way as the rest of people? Nonverbal Communication Blog

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Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Reading and reacting to faces, the effect of facial mimicry in improving facial emotion recognition in individuals with antisocial behavior and psychopathic traits”, by Kyranides, M. N.; Petridou, M.; Gokani, H. A.; Hill, S. and Fanti, K. A. (2022), in which authors investigate how people with antisocial personality disorder and/or psychopathic personality disorder recognize and answer to facial expressions.

Both antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy are associated with severe antisocial traits.

Antisocial personality disorder (APD from now on) has an identity of its own, and by many intellectuals, psychopathy is considered as part of it. However, other experts believe that psychopathy can be considered as a personality itself, and not as a behavioral trait.

Psychopathy, as we have already explained, would include the traits of the dark triad, which encompasses affective, interpersonal, and behavioral characteristics.

Correctly interpreting and transmitting affective and emotional states is crucial for social relationships and healthy group functioning of human beings.

Facial expressiveness plays a central role in interpersonal relationships, as it communicates silent social cues and helps reinforce acceptable social behaviors. In addition, it is a non-verbal channel that we pay a lot of attention to.

Previous studies suggest that people with psychopathic traits are characterized by deficiencies in facial emotion recognition, which, in turn, results in poor social adaptation and dysfunctional interpersonal relationships.

This raises the idea that similar deficits seen in people with antisocial personality disorder are due to the disorder itself or are the result of psychopathic features, although whether the latter are part of the antisocial disorder is unclear.

This week’s study aimed to differentiate the emotion-processing deficits of individuals with these traits, by examining how people with antisocial personality disorder, people with psychopathic disorder, and people with both, identify affective facial expressions and how they obey the instructions in which they are asked to imitate these expressions.

Empirical evidence suggests that people with psychopathic traits will show deficiencies in emotion recognition, but especially in facial expressions of fear and sadness.

Regarding antisocial personality disorder, very few people have explored the matter. In a 2014 study, more severe deficiencies in disgust recognition were found in a sample of people with APD compared to the control group. In 2002, deficiencies in the correct identification of happy and sad facial expressions were found, but no study controlled the psychopathic features that appeared in subjects with APD.

If these people theoretically experience difficulties in identifying the emotions of others, would they be capable of practicing facial mimicry?

Individuals with typical personality development engage in facial mimicry automatically when observing the expressions of others, and this has been associated with empathy.

However, the findings regarding facial mimicry in individuals with psychopathic traits are diverse. For example, according to one study, they have intact the ability to accurately mimic the expression of fear; according to another, they have difficulty reflecting negative emotions.

Something that seems to be logical is that if people with psychopathic traits and people with TPA have deficits in their ability to be empathic, they will have some kind of difficulty in correctly imitating the emotions of others. But, as we see, it is something that seems not to be confirmed.

For this study, 107 people over 18 years old were gathered, who were evaluated individually. They were presented with dynamic stimuli of facial expressions of sadness, happiness, anger, fear, and pain, in addition to neutral expressions. They had to imitate the presented expressions, suppress any facial response elicited by the stimulus, or do nothing and only answer the question of what facial expression was being displayed.

The results showed that facial recognition accuracy was significantly worse in the group that had psychopathic traits and APD at the same time, compared to the control group. In addition, the psychopathic traits + APD group showed increased choice of angry facial expression compared to the others. Surprisingly, the group that only had APD, showed more pronounced facial expressions when they had to mimic the expressions shown to them.

These findings are in line with previous work on the deficiencies of these people in the recognition of facial emotions and point towards the idea that the presence of psychopathic traits, isolated from antisocial personality, may represent a profile in itself, in which individuals would function in a similar way, but also different.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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