Developing Strategies for Decoding “Leaky” Messages: On Learning How and When to Decode Discrepant and Consistent Social Communications

Understanding Expressive Speech Acts: The Role of Prosody and Situational Context in French-Speaking 5- to 9-Year-Olds

“…When the inconsistency between lexical content and facial expression was made salient, more children relied on the nonlexical cue, as early as age 3. For these authors, this lexical bias is in clear contrast to the common heuristic used by adults: "Actions speak louder than words" (e.g., Blanck & Rosenthal, 1982;Demorest, Meyer, Phelps, Gardner, & Winner, 1984).…”

Teachers’ reports of students’ nonverbal communication in the classroom: A developmental study in grades K‐12

“…Conversely, in a study of lie detection ability, DePaulo and Jordan (1982) reported that children have somewhat better ability to detect lying from vocal nonverbal cues than from facial expressions, though the general ability of children to detect lies is quite minimal. Blanck and Rosenthal (1982) examined children's ability to comprehend sarcasm, a verbal statement contradicted or undercut by nonverbal, usually vocalic communication, and reported that children generally found sarcastic messages negative since they were not sensitive to the vocalic channel. They also reported that older children are better able to decode discrepant nonverbal cues such as those found in sarcastic messages.…”

Sex differences in nonverbal communication: Advantage lost or supremacy regained?

“…This focus on the positivity dimension in relationships may be what leads women to know the codes and usages of nonverbal communication better. There is evidence (Blanck & Rosenthal, 1982;DePaulo & Jordan, 1982) that women become better at decoding the controllable channels (symbolic communication) as they get older. It is also possible as English (1976) has suggested that it is women's passivity and the greater amount of time they spend watching others which leads to their knowing the rules better.…”

“…If women do know the social rules governing communication better than men and focus more on symboliccommunication while men rely on direct perception, then we would expect women's superiority over men to increase with age as cognitive development leads to symbolic communication becoming more important (Buck, 1984). This is precisely what happens (Blanck & Rosenthal, 1982). Women become better at decoding the controllable channels than men.…”