Responses of normal and disturbed adults and children to mixed messages.

Abstract

Mixed messages containing contradictory communication components were shown to normal and disturbed adults and children. The overall results revealed that normal adults' evaluations of mixed messages were significantly different from those of disturbed adults and from those of normal and disturbed children. Normal adults appeared to be influenced by all communication components (verbal statement, facial expression, vocal tone, and physical gesture) in mixed messages, whereas the other three subject groups were primarily influenced by the words.

Can Children Detect Conceptual Information Conveyed Through Other Children's Nonverbal Behavior's

“…Although our 7-and 8-year-old participants were not perfect at detecting information conveyed in others' speech, they were better at detecting information in speech than in gesture. This is consistent with other research (Bugental et al, 1970;Dimitrovsky, 1964;Reilly & Muzekari, 1979;Thompson & Massaro, 1986 demonstrating that young children are better at picking up information conveyed through verbal behaviors than nonverbal behaviors. Nevertheless, our results do suggest that they can detect information conveyed in both speech and gesture.…”

“…It may be surprising, however, that 7-and 8-yearold children can also detect information conveyed through hand gestures. These results, however, are consistent with literature on school-age children's ability to pick up information conveyed through other types of nonverbal behaviors, such as facial expressions, tone of voice, and body posture (Bugental et a]., 1970;Carnras et al, 1990;DePaulo & Jordan, 1982;Dimitrovsky, 1964;Reilly & Muzekari, 1979;Thompson & Massaro, 1986. These researchers argue that the ability to detect verbal and nonverbal information can be explained by the cognitive changes children undergo during middle childhood.…”

Gesture in the developing brain

“…Both processes would increase demands on semantic selection (Dick et al ., 2009; Green et al ., 2009; Holle & Gunter, 2007), resulting in more activity in right IFGTr for self‐adaptors than for gestures in adults, and more activity for self‐adaptors in adults than in children. In contrast, when speech is accompanied by self‐adaptors, 8‐ to 10‐year‐old children tend to focus on the message conveyed in speech, ignoring the kinds of information often conveyed in self‐adaptors (Bugental, Kaswan & Love, 1970; Morton & Trehub, 2001; Reilly & Muzekari, 1979). This would explain less activity for self‐adaptors compared to gestures in children.…”

Children's Understanding of Emotion in Speech

“…How might listeners judge a speaker's feelings in the context of discrepant propositional and paralinguistic information? The available evidence indicates that adults consider all available cues (Reilly & Muzekari, 1979), but that they rely primarily on paralanguage in such circumstances (Mehrabian & Wiener, 1967). Children's relative weighting of propositional and paralinguistic cues to emotion is likely to differ at different ages.…”