Body Language –Learnt As Fast As Speech?


Body language is an important means of communication to most species. Critical of course when two creatures meet, but also in general day to day contacts. This is especially true in social species with constant contacts between conspecifics.

Reading other species body language is critically important too. Your dog can read you almost like the proverbial book. It may recognize some words, but it’s your body language and intonation rather than words that is being understood. Or on occasion misunderstood and you may have the scars to prove it.

Human reliance on the spoken word has apparently relegated the reading of each other’s body language to very much a minor role. At least, many of us would claim that if we’re asked. But relying on your “gut instinct” or first impression of a person is gaining some respectability in the literature. We’ve gone along with that by and large even though we used to be told not to.

An interesting question arises as to how fast do we learn to read body language? We learn to speak quite slowly. We learn to read even more slowly. So where does learning to read body fit in?

Much body language is subtle and that must slow down the learning process. Learning to lie in body is rather more difficult than learning to lie in speech. A good actor is someone whose profession is lying very convincingly. Learning the words is the easy part. The expression by intonation, cadence and body action come together to make them convincing.

Mime is a great example of using body language to tell a story and all stories express emotion of various types. In a recent paper, Ross et al in last weeks PLoS ONE used actors and mime to check out the rate of progress in reading body for a group of 121 children and adults (1).

The actors wore tight fitting black suits and mimed to express emotions such as anger, sadness, happiness and fear. No white faces with makeup which might give clues, because reading faces is something babies do very early (as does your dog). To muddy the water more, the actors had reflective markers that were used in low light conditions to give a basic figure structure. Rather like a stick figure if one were to connect the light dots.

The group of participants of 4 to 18-years olds were asked to choose the emotion of the figure in full light and then in the point light outline figures. Then the data was pored over, graphed and pored over some more. At 4 no one was very good at picking up on the emotion expressed by the body language. By 18 they were better. Full light figures were easier to read correctly than point light outlines.

The excitement though is in the rate of learning to read body. The data showed a steep rise to 10-years old and then a slowly improving rise through 18. Full light scores were better, but the change from rapid learning to slowly improving occurred at 10 still. The slow improvement was slightly faster for the point outline figures, but not by much.

So it seems that we can be slower to learn body than to read and that we don’t become competent until our teenage years.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0044815


Remember That – Will It Be On The Test?


Remember that – will it be on the test? A common question. The new academic year is gearing up with new courses and fresh students about to take their seats in lecture theaters to listen to the golden words of wisdom from their professors.

Some of those words of wisdom will be remembered, but many more will be forgotten. Sometimes it’s the subject matter, sometimes it’s the phraseology, and sometimes it’s just the delivery that determines whether or not you’ll remember that gem.

Speaking for an hour or so on a dry topic is an art that some can pull off well, but often the continuous cadence of one voice leads to our attention wandering. Then we don’t remember that critical point. Making an effort at clear speech so that someone whose first language is different from yours, or which would help someone with a hearing deficit, makes a huge difference. Ear-buds for listening to music or taking phone messages during the lecture doesn’t count in terms of sympathy, of course.

A recent study by Van Engen et al from U Texas at Austin set about quantifying the problem of memory recognition of speech in trying circumstances. The first study used 18 young students to listen to sentences spoken and mixed with background chatter-type noise. Some sentences were sensible. Some weren’t, but all were short and the participants had to transcribe them as best they could.

The second study had a few more participants and the age range was wider going up to students in their 30’s. This time, both a normal conversational voice and a careful clear speaking voice were used.

The results were clear, the listeners were able to remember the short meaningful sentences best, but with a distinct advantage when care was taken to speak clearly and not just chat.

These experiments were all done individually in the lab and not in a lecture room. Large classes are probably a good thing as the speaker is more likely to speak slowly and clearly. Small groups are usually much more “chatty.” Does this mean that we should opt for the most popular classes one wonders idly when we should be listening.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0043753