Kinesics and Context

Birdwhistell, Ray L.

doi:10.9783/9780812201284

Cited by 553 publications

(213 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…This neglect might have been partly programmatic in origin. Variously, the process of social knowing has been deemed independent of what is processed (Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954), or the information has been taken to be purely conventional; hence the "expression" of social conditions has been considered a matter of learning just as much as the interpretation thereof has (Birdwhistell, 1970(Birdwhistell, /1973. A slurring of the distinction betweenjperceptual and intellectual functioning is also involved.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinematic specification of dynamics as an informational basis for person-and-action perception: Expectation, gender recognition, and deceptive intention.

Runeson¹,

Frykholm²

1983

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

606

432

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SUMMARYThe widespread conviction that perceiving another person must rest on ambiguous and fakeable information is challenged. Arguing from biomechanical necessities inherent in maintaining balance and coping with reactive impulses, we show that the detailed kinematic pattern is specific to an acting person's anatomical makeup and to the working of his or her motor control system. In this way information is potentially available about gender, identity, expectations, intentions, and what the person is in fact doing. We invoke the lawfulness of human movement, as elucidated by recent advances in motor control theory, to demonstrate the virtual impossibility of performing truly deceptive movements and to argue in general terms for the specification power inherent in human kinematics.The outcome of the analysis is subsumed under a principle of kinematic specification of dynamics (KSD), which states that movements specify the causal factors of events. Generally, a linked multiple degrees-of-freedom system does not exhibit substitutability; a change in one of its "input" factors cannot substitute for, or cancel, the multivariable effects of a change in another factor.Six explorative experiments are reported. Displaying humans in action with Johansson's (1973) patch-light technique, we show that (a) the influence of an invisible thrown object on the kinematics of the thrower enable observers to perceive the length of throw; (b) the lead-in movements of a person lifting a box allow perception of what weight the lifter expects; (c) a person lifting a box cannot deceive observers about the weight of the box, only convey the deceptive intention; (d) gender of adults and children in complex activity is recognizable to about 75% of presentations; (e) gender recognition rises to about 85% correct when the observed persons are.not self-conscious about gender; (f) real gender and expressed (acted) gender are simultaneously, but independently, perceived; and (g) observer instructions to judge only "gender" yields results that erroneously indicate a deception effect.We conclude that the experiments have demonstrated the considerable effectiveness of kinematic information in enabling perception of persons and action. Judgments of good precision were often obtained. Some perceived properties were relatively subtle states of the seen person. True conditions were perceived despite deceptive endeavors. The KSD principle therefore appears an appropriate conceptual guide, and the patch-light technique a useful empirical method, for the study of social knowing.The concluding discussion argues that person perception has a dual nature in that true person properties and communicative or deceptive expressions are co-specified in the kinematic pattern. Hence, they constitute alternative foci for perception, and attention can switch freely between them in normal social interaction. Extensive parallels exist between this view of person perception and Gibson's (1979) treatment of pictures and picture perception.Furthermore, we argue that the stu...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinematic specification of dynamics as an informational basis for person-and-action perception: Expectation, gender recognition, and deceptive intention.

Runeson¹,

Frykholm²

1983

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

606

432

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“…More recent assessments have been considerably less extravagant, but typically they have concluded that one of the important functions of gestures accompanying speech is to convey information to a listener (Argyle, 1974;Birdwhistell, 1970;Cohen, 1977;Kendon, 1983;Slama-Cazacu, 1976; for dissenting views see Feyereisen, van de Wiele, & Dubois, 1988;Moscovici, 1967;Rime &Schiaratura, 1991). For example, Birdwhistell (1970) argues that gestures visibly replicate information conveyed in the speech channel, thereby contributing to the redundancy of the accompanying speech.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, Birdwhistell (1970) argues that gestures visibly replicate information conveyed in the speech channel, thereby contributing to the redundancy of the accompanying speech. He also suggests that some gestures may be the structural equivalents of certain linguistic forms and may be used as substitutes for them.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Do conversational hand gestures communicate?

Krauss¹,

Morrel-Samuels²,

Colasante³

1991

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

195

115

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In 5 experiments, male and female undergraduates viewed gestures and tried to select the words that originally accompanied them; read interpretations of gestures* meanings and tried to select the words that originally had accompanied them; tried to recognize gestures they previously had seen, presented either with or without the accompanying speech; and assigned gestures and the accompanying speech to semantic categories. On all 4 tasks, performance was better than chance but markedly inferior to performance when words were used as stimuli. Judgments of a gesture's semantic category were determined principally by the accompanying speech rather than gestural form. It is concluded that although gestures can convey some information, they are not richly informative, and the information they convey is largely redundant with speech

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“…However, any comparison of verbal and body language is a thorny issue, since even though we may be able to see some kind of concordance and interdependence between them, their material and expressive basis is essentially very different. Research conducted since the 1970s by several prestigious authors in the field of communication theory (Hall, 1968;Birdwhistell, 1970;Efron, 1972;Ekman, 1976;Poyatos, 1983;Argyle, 1988) has left an exhaustive legacy regarding the kinesic and proxemic dimensions of human paraverbal communication. In contrast, however, very little educational research has been concerned with the role of gestures in teaching and learning (Roth, 2001).…”

Section: Paraverbal Communication: the Gestural Discourse Envelops Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinesics and proxemics communication of expert and novice PE teachers

et al. 2011

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The aim of the study is to analyse the sequential paraverbal communication used while teaching by expert and novice PE teachers. Four expert and four novice teachers were observed using a coding scheme of paraverbal behavior. The detection of temporal patterns using Theme v.5 enabled sequential analyses of paraverbal behaviour. The results indicate that compared to expert teachers, novice teachers used a greater number of gestures and did not always make effective use of the teaching space. Their gestures were also less qualitative in nature as they did not take full advantage of the communicative possibilities offered by some of the gestures analysed. Kinesics and proxemics communication of expert and novice PE teachers AbstractThe aim of the study is to analyse the sequential paraverbal communication used while teaching by expert and novice PE teachers. Four expert and four novice teachers were observed using a coding scheme of paraverbal behavior. The detection of temporal patterns using Theme v.5 enabled sequential analyses of paraverbal behaviour. The results indicate that compared to expert teachers, novice teachers used a greater number of gestures and did not always make effective use of the teaching space. Their gestures were also less qualitative in nature as they did not take full advantage of the communicative possibilities offered by some of the gestures analysed.

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Kinesics and Context

Cited by 553 publications

References 2 publications

Kinematic specification of dynamics as an informational basis for person-and-action perception: Expectation, gender recognition, and deceptive intention.

Kinematic specification of dynamics as an informational basis for person-and-action perception: Expectation, gender recognition, and deceptive intention.

Do conversational hand gestures communicate?

Kinesics and proxemics communication of expert and novice PE teachers

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