Perceptual Salience as a Function of Nonverbal Expressiveness
This study investigates the stimulus properties characterizing the behavior of nonverbally expressive people and the cues that underlie these properties. Observers viewed brief video clips of 32 female subjects either high or low in expressiveness. While watching each clip, one set of observers segmented the subjects' behavior into meaningful units. A second set of observers rated the behavior on stimulus dimensions related to perceptual salience and also rated how noticeable each subject was. As predicted, expressives' behavior was seen as significantly more intense, more novel, more complex, and more changing, and the subjects themselves were judged to be more noticeable than the unexpressive subjects. Further expressives elicited a significantly higher segmentation rate than unexpressives. Nonverbal cue coding suggests that gestural animation has the stronigest impact on salience. The results are discussed in relation to salience effects and social influence processes.