Developmental changes in decoding discrepant and nondiscrepant nonverbal cues.

Abstract

In this study we examined developmental changes in responses to consistent and discrepant video and audio nonverbal cues. A videotaped Nonverbal Discrepancy Test was administered to children aged 9-15 years. The discrepancy test measures (a) decoding accuracy-the extent to which subjects are able to identify affects (positivity and dominance) from visual (facial and body) cues and audio (content-filtered and random-spliced) cues-and (b) video primacy-the extent to which subjects are more influenced by video (face or body) than by audio cues. It was found that older children were more accurate at decoding affects than were younger children, particularly dominance-submission cues. Video primacy increased with age for facial cues (but not for body cues) and for cues of positivity (but not for cues of dominance). Relative to males younger female subjects showed more video primacy and older female subjects showed less video primacy, particularly for cues of dominance-submission. Relative to younger children older children showed less video primacy in decoding extremely discrepant audio and video cues than in decoding moderately discrepant audio and video cues. The development of nonverbal sensitivity to video and audio cues is discussed.When do children develop the ability to and vocal cues and therefore provided an decode (interpret) nonverbal cues? A re view opportunity to compare sensitivity to difby Charlesworth and Kreutzer (1973) indi-ferent nonverbal channels. It was found that cated that the ability to understand facial younger subjects showed a relative adexpressions appears during the first year of vantage in decoding tone of voice as oplife and increases in a linear fashion during posed to video cues. Bugental, Kaswan, the preschool and grade-school ages. A Love, and Fox (1970) also reported that similar developmental trend has been noted video (but not audio) cues had less impact for the ability to decode vocal cues among on young children (relative to adults), pars' to 12-year-old children (Dimitrovsky, ticularly in decoding women 's positive af-1964). Recently, Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, fects. It is possible, then, that the ability Rogers, and Archer (1979) found that age to understand vocal intonations develops had a linear effect on decoding accuracy prior to sensitivity to other nonverbal chanuntil accuracy starts to level off between nels, but this sensitivity decreases to some ages 20 and 30. extent during socialization (cf. Rosenthal et The research by . That is, older children may either focused on the ability to decode facial, body, pay less attention to audio cues or discount the information they gain from these cues in favor of the information they gain from

Longitudinal and cross-sectional age effects in nonverbal decoding skill and style.

“…Finally, the present findings replicated cross-sectionally the results of the Zuckerman et al (1980) study showing that relative to younger children, older children treat extremely discrepant messages with some caution. As previously stated, DePaulo et al (1978) suggested that people perceive extremely discrepant messages as indicative of deception and therefore may attend relatively more to the audio cues.…”

“…Prior to presenting the analysis of consistent and discrepant decoding ability it should be noted again that the longitudinal aspects of the present study were designed to permit replication of the cross-sectional aspects of the Zuckerman et al (1980) findings of the effect of age on the decoding accuracy of consistent nonverbal cues. It should also be noted that the overall mean accuracy score (M = 3.21) differed significantly from zero, f(76) = 26.44, p < .001, d = 6.07, 3 indicating that decoding accuracy was better than chance.…”

“…The findings reported by Rosenthal et al (1979) were based on the study of consistently communicated video and audio cues, and those of Zuckerman et al (1980) were based on both consistent and discrepant cues. Both studies employed cross-sectional designs.…”

“…Our final interest was in the extent to which this video primacy is influenced by the degree of discrepancy between audio and video nonverbal cues (leakage). The findings reported by Rosenthal et al (1979) were based on the study of consistently communicated video and audio cues, and those of Zuckerman et al (1980) were based on both consistent and discrepant cues. Both studies employed cross-sectional designs.…”

Decoding affective communication in intimate relationships

“…In their review, Eisenberg and Lennon (1983) demonstrated that with increasing age (subjects were 9 years and older), females lose their advantage in decoding covert nonverbal cues. Empirical data indicate that they may gain more competence for decoding overt cues (Zuckerman, Blanck, DePaulo and Rosenthal, 1980). Interestingly, these studies on sex differences did not explicitly analyse the possible effects of gender role attitudes and gender stereotypes but simply speculated about the effects of gender on socialization.…”