Do Actions Speak Louder than Words? Preschool Children’s Use of the Verbal-Nonverbal Consistency Principle during Inconsistent Communications

In David Eagleman’s documentary, “Why Do I Need You?” he describes the importance of social interaction in the development of our brain. It is fundamental to interact with others and work holistically because it helps our brain to grow ultimately benefiting both the individual and society. Understanding people’s facial expressions, something so quick it is almost done unconsciously, is a vital aspect in communication. Eagle man demonstrates how individual from a young age, as early as twelve months, can understand the importance of socialization from their “inborn instincts” and through the observation of others to decide who to play and not play with. We thrive from understanding people’s social signal and without it it can become very hard

Bandura suggested children learn from watching adults – referred to as ‘Bobo doll experiment’. Three groups of children watched a film of a variation in behaviour in adults towards a doll.

Nonverbal cues are a major part of expectancy violations theory (West & Turner, 2014). EVT suggests that people hold expectations of how people should act or respond to certain situations (Burgoon et al., 2016; Chiles & Roloff, 2014; Dickter & Gyurovski, 2012; Frisby & Sidelinger, 2013; Houser, 2005; Johnson, 2012; Lannutti & Camero, 2007; McAuliff, Lapin, & Michel, 2015; Meltzer & McNulty, 2011; Miller-Ott & Kelly, 2015; Sidelinger & Bolen, 2015; Walther-Martin, 2015). Also, scholars believe that these preconceived notions are learned (Burgoon et al., 2016; West & Turner, 2014; Walther-Martin,

Saxe identifies this group as preverbal babies. By studying the behaviors of these infants, psychologists are able determine that basic instinct that humans share. These babies, aged between four and twelve months, are much too young to be influenced by the institution around them. The infants are also too young to communicate their thought processes, so psychologists analyze the only responses these infants can communicate, looking and crawling. In the experiment involving these preverbal infants, babies were shown videos of one man being “nice” to a girl while another was “mean” to the girl.

Babies have learned how to express a wide variety of emotions by the time they are nine months old. Their emotions are all over the place. They can go from intense happiness to intense sadness extremely quickly. By the time they are twelve months, babies are aware of other people’s expressions and their emotional states. At this time they are making the connection that expressions match feelings on the inside and show on the outside. By age two, toddlers can show a wide range of emotions and are becoming more aware and are able to cope with their emotions. Their ability to use language becomes more apparent, learning words that mean something to them. They are known to use a single word with an emotional emphasis to express a complete thought, question or request. During the second year their language becomes more sophisticated. Toddlers began to put 2 to 3 words together forming easy phrases. Their vocabulary grows from there. From infancy to toddler and onward, language and emotional development are

That is why body language and facial expressions can be very important when it comes to demonstrative communication. An example of body language that can be misunderstood would be when two people are talking and one person has their arms folded across their chest. This can be perceived as the person not listening or being considered overprotective of themselves and will not take criticism lightly. The person with the folded arms could just be cold or it is a learned gesture from their parents and that is how they listen. This is why many people would agree that demonstrative communication should not only have the nonverbal but also the verbal to go along with it so that people do not have any misunderstandings and the issue can be handled properly. According to Sutton, a person cannot fully deliver the anecdote of the day to anyone lacking words, except if the person can mime the entire tale (Sutton, 2011). Even if the person is able to mime they cannot express the entire issue perfectly. There has to be some degree of distance. This type of communication cannot always be expressed perfectly. An example of this would be that a person cannot convey the nonverbal communication over the phone and the person on the other end only has the verbal part of the communication and might take something the wrong way because they are not able to see the nonverbal part of the communication and that is where misunderstandings come in.

Even newborn infants show social behaviours. They love to be touched, held, smiled at and cooed to. At as young an age as one month old, infants can be seen to experiment with their faces and expressions, and may even try to mimic adults’ facial gestures. Because their facial muscles are fully developed at birth, they can make many expressions – “Newborns can smile slightly, knit their brows, or appear to pout or cry, and if you give them something that tastes awful, they look disgusted” (4).

There are similarities when communication with children, young people and adults. For example; eye contact should be maintained, active listening should be demonstrated with both age groups. Responding positively to feedback that has been given, speak clearly to both age groups.

Pexman in the article “How Do Typically Developing Children Grasp The Meaning Of Verbal Irony?” designed an experiment that allowed individuals to understand the age range in which children are able to distinguish and understand the concept of sarcasm. The experiment consisted of 70 participants (36 male, 34 female) ranging from the ages of 6-10 years. In this experiment twenty-four puppets, who were dressed to resemble children, were used as characters in a puppet show. Twelve puppet shows were presented each ending with either an ironic, literal, ironic compliment, or literal compliment. The puppet show went as follows: “This is Sam, and this is John. They play on the same soccer team. It is the last few minutes of a game. Outcome 1: John kicks the ball, scoring a goal. Sam says: “That was a great play!” (Literal compliment) or Sam says: “That was a terrible play!” (Ironic compliment) Outcome 2: John kicks the ball, missing a goal. Sam says: “That was a great play!” (Ironic criticism) or Sam says: “That was a terrible play!” (Literal criticism).” (Pexman, 2006) These shows were set up in a way where the main character did not participate in any of the actions (ex: playing soccer) but always complimented/criticized the characters who did. The narratives of the puppet show were also prerecorded in order to ensure that the criticism made were done in a mocking/insincere tone. After watching the plays the children were asked to rate the main character/speakers

The results showed that the ratings of children’s negative facial expressions were the highest for children

These coders were expected to accurately record all facial and behavioral responses during the 30 second period right after the child was informed whether they had finished before or after the timer. The coding scheme used was based on the work of Geppert (1986; Geppert & Gartmann, 1983; Heckhausen, 1988) and Izard (1995), and the total number of expressions was tallied according to it. The expressions were then tallied per child in response to failure and

While in the younger age group, I observed many examples of emotions. EJ, a male born on 6/3/2015, gave me a great insight. He showed anger when Tula took his toy. He screamed and yelled until someone paid attention to him. I assessed this as normative because many toddlers at that age have a hard time understanding the concept of sharing. EJ showed happiness as he was running around the room laughing and giggling. I assessed this as normative because he expressed his emotions normally as someone would when they are happy. He also showed affection when the teacher walked into the room by reaching for her to

Child analysis is also difficult because their symbolic activities are of a lower standard than adults. Emotional difficulties are extensive in young children; the older children have great problem in disguising their problems with the use of symbols. Thus, they express their feelings more direct as they are closer to the surface in comparison to adults.

Now that the child is school age, it has many different learned experiences with facial expressions from parents, siblings, friends, and teachers. A child will be reprimanded for doing something against the parents’ wishes and will be told to stop. Children will often test the parents’ limits and continue with the action and when the parent combines the verbal action along with the stern facial expression, the child understand it has reached the parent’s limit. Verbal communication combined with facial expressions provides more meaning to the conversation than just words alone.

You mentioned earlier about facial expressions and they have to read that and it is part of the