Perception of Emotion and Response to Teachers' Expectancy by Elementary School Children

Abstract

Within each of 6 elementary school grades, a randomly selected 23% of the children were reported to their teachers as showing unusual potential for intellectual gains. All Ss were also administered a task designed to measure the accuracy of their perception of vocal communications of emotion by male and female speakers. After 4 mo. the “special” children scoring high in accuracy of perception of emotion as expressed by a female speaker showed significantly greater profit from the teachers' favorable expectations than did those low in accuracy. “Special” male Ss high in accuracy in perceiving emotion in a male showed significantly less profit from the expectancy after 4 mo. but significantly greater profit after being away from the teacher who received the expectancy for a 1-yr. period.

Pygmalion revisited: A loud call for caution

“…As part of a larger study, Conn, Edwards, Rosenthal, and Crowne (1968) administered TOGA at the beginning of the second semester to all the Grade 1 through 6 students in an East Coast, uppermiddle-class elementary school. Randomly choosing approximately 23% of the students from each classroom, they gave the names of these pupils to the teachers with the typical "bias" information.…”

“…Study 5 (Coma, Edwards, Rosenthal, & Crowne, 1968). As part of a larger study, Conn, Edwards, Rosenthal, and Crowne (1968) administered TOGA at the beginning of the second semester to all the Grade 1 through 6 students in an East Coast, uppermiddle-class elementary school.…”

The Relation of Attention to Social Cue Discrimination, Achievement, and Adjustment in the Elementary School Classroom

“…Students might also have to discriminate teachers' concomitant social cues. Support for this notion is provided in a study by Conn, Edwards, Rosenthal, and Crowne (1). Children who 4 6 JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY best discriminated the emotional content of an adult female's voice showed greatest response, as indexed by increments in academic performance, to teacher demands.…”

Pavlov's Mice, Pfungst's Horse, and Pygmalion's PONS: Some Models for the Study of Interpersonal Expectancy Effects*

“…Thus, for example, if those teachers who best communicate their expectations for children's intellectual performance in the auditory channel were assigned children whose best channels of reception were also auditory, we would predict greater effects of teacher expectation than we would if those same teachers were assigned children less sensitive to auditory nonverbal communications. 23 Ultimately, then, what we would want would be a series of accurate measurements for each person, describing his or her relative ability to send and to receive in each of a variety of channels of nonverbal communication. It seems reasonable to suppose that if we had this informa-tion for two or more people we would be better able to predict the outcome of their interaction regardless of whether the focus of the analysis were on the mediation of interpersonal expectations or on some other interpersonal transaction.…”