A study to investigate the preclinical and clinical consequences of 79 occupational-therapy students' emotional attributes found that, when interviews were conducted in pairs, their feelings and behavior were associated with attributes of negative emotionality and nonverbal expressiveness. Students who had a high degree of negative emotionality…

This study with nine Spanish-speaking bilingual children (ages 5-7) with limited English proficiency examined perception of nonverbal emotional speech cues in both Spanish and English. Results yielded higher accurate responses in Spanish, but these results may have been related to the low emotion conveyed by one of the four speakers. (Author/DB)

Drawing on research from the field of communication, this article proposes a framework that identifies, classifies, and organizes foreign language teachers' nonverbal behavior. It describes an observational study in which each nonverbal behavior in the framework is defined and illustrated as it occurs in a foreign language class. (Author/VWL)

Four experiments examined children's interpretations of lexical and vocal cues to speaker affect and the developmental trajectory of their interpretations of discrepancy. Findings indicate that the affective interpretations of 7- to 10-year-olds reflected a weighted- averaging strategy favoring the affect conveyed lexically. Both 4- and…

In three studies, 2-year-old children communicated to a parent which two out-of-reach objects contained a sticker. Across trials, the objects were positioned in different configurations so that it possible or impossible for a child's pointing gesture to unambiguously specify one object. Results are discussed. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the role eye gaze and pointing gestures play in 3- to 5-year-olds' understanding of complex pragmatic communication. One experiment demonstrates children better understand videotapes of a mother making indirect requests to a child when requests are accompanied by nonverbal pointing behaviors; in another children are participants…

Explores the extent to which children with specific language impairment (SLI) with severe phonological working memory deficits express knowledge uniquely in gesture as compared to speech. Using a paradigm in which gesture-speech relationships have been studied extensively, children with SLI and conversation judgment-matched, typically developing…

Agrees with King's (1994) scenario of language emerging over a continuum with each step requiring an adaptive motivation. The article explores the major themes in King's work, including information donation and acquisition, gesture and information transmission, the evolution of social information transfer, the beginnings of language, and…

The ability to recognize emotions that were easily identifiable and those that were more difficult to identify was studied in 48 children and 76 children with learning disabilities (ages 9-12). Children of both genders and ability levels were more accurate in identifying expressions of affect from female faces. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Addresses patterns and influence of student perceptions of instructor power use, affinity-seeking, and nonverbal immediacy in American and German classrooms. Notes that American instructors were seen to be higher in power use, affinity-seeking, and nonverbal immediacy than German instructors. Concludes that the influence of instructor referent…

Focuses on the relationship of three student predispositions to their expectations for instructor communication behavior. Examines students' communication apprehension, grade and learning orientation, and humor orientation in relation to students' expectations for teachers' use of verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviors, clarity behaviors, and…

This paper reviews the evidence for problems on emotion-recognition tasks by people with mental retardation. It finds a lack of evidence for the specificity of these performance deficits and suggests that previous findings resulted from IQ-related deficits in memory and attention, in imagination, and in dealing with static or ambiguous stimuli.…

When do infants begin to communicate positive affect about physical objects to their social partners? We examined developmental changes in the timing of smiles during episodes of initiating joint attention that involved an infant gazing between an object and a social partner. Twenty-six typically developing infants were observed at 8, 10, and 12…

Storybook reading in child care classrooms typically occurs in one large group, a context that does not provide opportunities for each child to talk about the book. Two-year-old children, in particular, need individual support to facilitate their language participation, and they want to touch the book and be close to the teacher. The purpose of…

The study investigated the recognition of standardized facial expressions of emotion (anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise) at a perceptual level (experiment 1) and at a semantic level (experiments 2 and 3) in children with autism (N= 20) and normally developing children (N= 20). Results revealed that children with autism were as…