Facial Behavior and Perceptual Characteristics of Environment

Facial Behavior and Perceptual Characteristics of Environment

Introduction

Among all nonverbal communications that are postures, body movements, voice, gaze etc, face is potentially the most accessible window in to the system which rules our social and emotional lives. It is the communication power of face which makes pother people focuses it during social interactions. The facial expressions and changes in facial patters inform other about the emotional state of people and help regulating the spoken conversation and social interaction. Researchers are studying the dynamics of facial expressions for many years in order to avoid the possible drawbacks of static expressions and gaining more realistic examples (Kunde et al. 2011). However, the problem still lies in categorization of spontaneous and active facial expressions in order to have information about the underlying emotional states. In this paper facial expressions of six disabled people in a room will be observed in relation to the current environmental setting by the author. These facial expressions will be observed while taking into account the perceptual characteristics of environment described by Knapp.

Discussion

Most people experience some discomfort to mix with people with disabilities, or to communicate with them. This discomfort often stems from a lack of information that causes fear of doing wrong, injuring the other. The physical surroundings can be perceived in many ways. The ways in which, environment is perceived also affect the communicative behavior whether verbal or non-verbal (Vessel, 2004). Often people create environments in a way which intentionally or unintentionally manipulate and reveal the perception of people who use them. There are six perceptual characteristics of environment described by Knapp (1980): warmth, formality, privacy, constraint, familiarity and distance. These perceptual characteristics also affect the facial behavior of disabled people.

Perception of Familiarity and Facial expression

The author observed that five among the six people were normal regarding their behavior; they were talking to each other or sometimes were involved in their own busyness as all of them were there for more than six months. On the other hand, the sixth one just came two days ago and that is why he was not familiar with the environment as well as with others. Due to this fact, a sign of anxiety in the forms of frowns could be observed on his face when anyone tries to communicate him. In general, this group of people is very accessible, barely preserves distance from strangers and is extremely affectionate (Whiting and Robinson, 2002). In contrast, in some cases, “excessive shyness” is reported. Such was observed that this disabled teenager tried to hide his face which was full of worries when a male nurse greeted him and move with no means to do this was to offer him a hand in greeting (Theng, 2011).

Perception of Privacy and Facial expression

The extent, to which an environment is small and enclosed, allowing few people to enter, is the degree to which it may be considered as private. Privacy is increased when people believe that there is less possibility of their ...