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The Role of Nonverbal Communication in the Classroom

What role does nonverbal communication play in the classroom? As many children around the country head back to school, it’s important for parents and teachers to think about nonverbal communication and how it influences behavior and learning.

In the video below, Dr. Matsumoto discusses the role of nonverbal communication between teachers and students in order to create better engagement between them. For the complete interview, visit this past blog post.

Dr. Matsumoto believes teachers can think about how to structure an environment to foster a certain type of engagement. He emphasizes different types of environments give implicit messages. 

The Latest Research

Research backs up what Dr. Matsumoto suggests. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology found that heavily decorated classrooms can bombard students with too much visual information, interfering with their memory and ability to focus.

While teachers have good intentions when decorating, many classrooms end up being “sensory-rich” in a way that “could hamper children’s learning gains rather than help,” according to psychologists Pedro Rodrigues and Josefa Pandeirada, who co-authored the study.

7 Tips to Foster a Better Learning Environment

What are some helpful tips to improve students’ executive functions, which include skills like memory, attention, and self-regulation? Read our handy infographic below created with info from Edutopia.

The post The Role of Nonverbal Communication in the Classroom first appeared on Humintell.

4 Body Language Displays You’ll See at the Tokyo Olympics

Tokyo 2020: Olympics boss reluctant to hold Games behind closed doors

The Tokyo Olympics are a month away! The Olympic Games are set to begin Friday July 23rd and are an excellent place to observe body language and nonverbal behavior; tensions are high and emotions are always on full display.

Keep in mind no matter how many times the Olympic venues and locations change, the facial expressions on an athlete’s face do not. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat will always be signaled on the face in the same way.

What nonverbal displays can you observe at the Olympic Games? Read on to learn more…

1) Universal Facial Expressions of Emotion

The Olympics give us an opportunity to read people exhibiting unfiltered, raw emotions. With emotions as high as they are during the Games, few people would attempt to conceal their emotions, even if they weren’t so physically exhausted!

Humintell Director Dr. David Matsumoto’s experience as an Olympic Judo coach and International Judo Federation (IJF) Researcher has given him unique insight into the way Olympians express emotions.

His study entitled “Spontaneous facial expressions of emotion of congenitally and non-congenitally blind individuals” was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The first of its kind, he studied congenitally blind (blind from birth) and sighted judo athletes at the 2004 Paralympic Games and the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.

During the course of the study, more than 4,800 photographs were captured and analyzed, including images of athletes from 23 countries. According to the findings, there were “no differences between congenitally blind, non-congenitally blind, and sighted athletes, either on the level of individual facial actions or in facial emotion configurations”.

This meant that the blind and sighted athletes produced the exact same facial expression, firing the exact same muscles at exactly the same time in similar situations.

These findings provide compelling evidence that facial expressions of emotion are hardwired into our genes and are not learned culturally.

2) Duchenne Smiles

Podium Mens Judo Competition 60 Kg Men Editorial Stock Photo - Stock Image | Shutterstock

After examining photos from top competitors in the 2004 Olympic Games, Dr. Matsumoto observed that the winners almost all sported pronounced, genuine smiles.

He referred to these as the Duchenne smile, and the genuine nature of the setting showcases these as truly prototypical expressions of happiness.

These involved: “smiles that involve not only the smiling muscle that pulls the lip corners up but also the muscle around the eyes, which lifts the cheeks, narrow the eyelids and produces crow’s feet wrinkles.”

3) Displays of Triumph

Judoka Travis Stevens Wins Team USA's First-Ever Olympic Medal In His Weight Class

In addition to being an amazing showcase of emotions, the Olympics also demonstrate the unity of human emotions across cultures. Given that the Games bring athletes together from all over the world, they present a prime study in the differences and similarities between different expressions of emotions.

Dr. Matsumoto’s research has also found that, upon winning the gold, Olympic athletes almost invariably showcase the same emotion: triumph.

Interestingly, this is not traditionally included as a universal basic emotion, but all the same, Dr. Matsumoto found it again and again in pictures and videos of triumphant competitors. He noted: “When we studied pride, there was always something gnawing at me because some of the expressions that were previously labeled pride just didn’t make that much sense to me.”

Eventually, he and fellow Humintell researcher Dr. Hyi Sung Hwang labeled this emotion triumph, contending that “Triumph has its own signature expression that is immediate, automatic and universal across cultures.” Instead of the subtle, self-satisfied smile that marks pride, triumph is displayed in a jubilant, almost aggressive fashion.

Interestingly, this emotion holds even in cultures where dominance and triumph are generally deemphasized in favor of humility, and it can be seen amongst non-human primates and even other animals as well. This all suggests a deep evolutionary and biological root behind the emotion of triumph, which we have also noted with other emotions.

Moreover, its manifestation is not just limited to a facial expression. Triumph is often accompanied by a sort of “victory stance,” with arms raised and head held up high. This holds for victors from all over the world, emphasizing past research that found similarities in gestures universally across cultures.

4) The Face Cover

We often see athletes and individuals in high stress, emotional situations do what Dr. Matsumoto calls a “face cover”.

But why exactly do people cover their face in emotional and stressful times?

Some individuals believe that the face cover is only a part of social communication, but Dr. Matsumoto believes that it is not. He believes that individuals often cover their face to conceal their emotions and that it is an immediate reaction that most people cannot control.

Dr. Matsumoto also suggests that covering one’s face could also have some evolutionary basis, rooted in not letting enemies see your emotions because it could potentially be a danger to your well-being. Nonetheless, this gesture is immediate and unconscious.

Keep your eye out for this behavior and you’ll surprisingly see it fairly frequently (you may even catch yourself doing it!)

The post 4 Body Language Displays You’ll See at the Tokyo Olympics first appeared on Humintell.

The Importance of Nonverbal Communication

Is it true that there are 19 different smiles, but only 6 of them are related to happiness? What happens when we smile sadly and what does the rest of our body language convey?

In this video, Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto helps explain the world of nonverbal communication to wider audiences. He emphasizes that nonverbal communication is anything that does not include verbal language, but the varieties of nonverbal communication are almost endless.

One of these is based in the environment. What is the lighting of the conversation? Is music playing or is there a specific sound? This helps communicate something. Similarly, our personal characteristics, such as how we dress, convey something revealing about our personality, without us even opening our mouths.

Dr. Matsumoto also describes “behavioral traces.” Even when we are not in the room, certain aspects of our personality can be conveyed. For instance, if somebody were to enter your house without your presence, they would see how you have laid out your room. They would see what you put on the walls. Each of these things communicates something to that person.

Of particular focus, however, are nonverbal behavior which includes the microexpressions, body language, and other slight activities that we engage in. While words are incredibly powerful, they must inevitably exist within a context of non-verbal behavior, and nonverbal communication more broadly.

In fact, when verbal messages contradict non-verbal messages, most of the information we garner from the conversation come from the non-verbal messages. Even though we are often bad at reading these forms of communication, there is still some instinctive receptivity, according to Dr. Matsumoto.

Watch this fascinating interview below!

The post The Importance of Nonverbal Communication first appeared on Humintell.