What Anxious Learners Can Tell Us About Anxious Body Language– How To Read Nonverbal Behavior
Christopher Philip
Tammy Gregersen, University of Northern Iowa conducted an observational study in 2005 on subjects who were learning a foreign language. In her assessment, she watched how the participants performed while focusing on their nonverbal behaviour. She focused primarily on nonverbal cues related to anxiety.
In a learning context, anxiety can have particularly deleterious consequences. It may cause a person to ruminate over poor performance and respond less effectively to their own errors, may avoid class, procrastinate, have unrealistically high expectations, may freeze up when performance is required, participate less, and even forget previously learned material.
Nonverbal communication of anxiety has been thoroughly discussed, but only through anecdotal channels. Little actual empirical study has been produced. For example, it is generally understood that anxiety is characterized by less eye contact, body tension, protective behaviours such as face covering and leaning away.
Understanding which students are anxious learners is a good start-point for identifying which students are struggling.
While this study is presented as a study of learning anxiety, it has applications with anxiety generally. That is, the cues presented in learning a foreign language can be read during any situation involving anxiety. While few of us are teachers, understanding the cues surrounding anxiety is beneficial for many other reasons.
The study involved observing the subjects as they took part in an oral exam to record their success in learning a foreign language.
The Results
1. Face Nonverbal Behaviour – Including facial activity such as tense facial muscles, grimaces, face contortions, twitches, brow behavior i.e., raising and lowering of the eyebrows, and blinking behavior, as well as the frequency and duration of smiling.
Results: Facial action by non-anxious participants ranged from 6 – 23 while those of anxious people ranged from 2-3.
Therefore non-anxious people tensed, grimaced, contorted, and twitched their faces about 6 times more than anxious learners. Nose wrinkling was the usual expression made by anxious learners otherwise, tense facial muscles prevented other facial expressions.
Brow behaviour was also more expressive in non-anxious. The non-anxious people moved their brow 11-25 times versus 7-12 times for the anxious learners. The average difference was 89%. The non-anxious learners tended to raise and lower their brow with verbal speech, the anxious learners tended to knit their eyebrow by brining them together.
Blinking was less at 12.5 times per minute for non-anxious compared to anxious at 23 times per minute. A normal blink rate is considered to be around 14-17 blinks per minute.
Smiling occurred at 5.5 times in 4 minutes with anxious learners and non-anxious 11 times. Of 240 seconds, the anxious spent 17 seconds smiling and the non-anxious spend 96.5 seconds smiling. When the anxious learners smiled, they tended to laugh nervously after they recognized that they had made an error.
Summary: Nervous learners tend to freeze their facial muscles resulting in less facial affect, but when they do move their faces, it usually results in wrinkled noses. Nervous learners also tend not to move their eyebrows, don’t smile often but do blink at a higher rate. Overall, anxious learners tend to freeze more, but whilst freezing blink more rapidly.
2. Gazing Nonverbal Behaviour – Including direction (up, down, at teacher, closed), frequency and duration.
Upwards: Anxious gazed up 13 times lasting 47.5 seconds out of 240 whereas the non-anxious looked up 20.5 times for 42.8 seconds.
Downward: Anxious gazed down 17.5 times lasting 87.3 seconds and the nonaxious looked down 26.5 seconds for 46.5 seconds.
Toward the teacher: The non-anxious looked at the teacher for 146 seconds (about half the total time) whereas the anxious looked at the teacher for 92 seconds for a difference about 59%.
Eye closed: Three out of five students closed their eyes lasting longer than a normal blink. When this happened it lasted a total of 11-15 seconds. This occurred a total of 3-13 times.
Summary: Nervous learners gaze up and down at similar rates to non-anxious but gaze less often at their teacher and keep their eyes closed in extended eye blinks far more often and for greater durations of time.
3. Posture Nonverbal Behaviour – Leaning in versus leaning out, leg crossing, open or closed body posture, location of hands, etc.
Overall Summary: Generally, non-anxious learners leaned forward slight toward the teacher, used more gestures, and had a more open body posture with the knees slightly apart. The anxious learners kept their backs to their chair, closed position with legs or ankles crossed. There was also significantly more crossing and re-crossing of the legs. The anxious participants also tended to cross their arms over their chest when not busy doing other things. On the other hand, the non-anxious tended to hold their hands on their laps.
The anxious group was more fidgety and habitually adjusted clothing, scratching their face, stroke their hair, touch their stomach or legs or rubbing their hands, playing with pens or notebooks. The anxious people also tended to bounce, jiggle or tap the feet. The non-anxious people also tended to nod their head more often.
Drawing Conclusions
Anxious learners or anxiousness (anxiety) is exhibited by various cues including, more tense and less expressive faces, limited eyebrow movement and when moved, tense or wrinkled, less smiling, limited eye contact, extended blinking, slight backward lean in the chair, tense bodies in a closed body position, with arms and legs crossed.
Movement was limited, but when done was restricted to nonproductive behaviour (not gesticulating) such as adjust clothing, scratching the face, stroking the hair or playing with a pen. The feet were moved more often characterized by jiggling and tapping. In other words, the hands were used for self-contact and body manipulation or to play with an object rather than constructively to accompany speech.
Head nods were also generally absent in the anxious learners and the overall posture was closed rather than open.
Overall, nonverbal behaviour is a successful way to read anxiety in other people, and in learners specifically, as this study shows.
While this study deals specifically with learning anxiety, the cues are transferable across contexts and can help point out anxiety through nonverbal means in other situations.
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Gregersen, Tammy S. Nonverbal Cues: Clues to the Detection of Foreign Language Anxiety. Foreign Language Annals. 2005. 38(3): 388-400