We studied the effect of two social settings (collaborative versus competitive) on the visual and auditory expressions of uncertainty by children in two age groups (8 and 11). We conducted an experiment in which children played a quiz game in pairs. They either had to collaborate or compete with each other. We found that the Feeling-of-Knowing of eight-year-old children did not seem to be affected by the social setting, contrary to the Feeling-of-Knowing of 11-year-old children. In addition, we labelled children’s expressions in clips taken from the experiment for various visual and auditory features. We found that children used some of these features to signal uncertainty and that older children exhibited clearer cues than younger children. In a subsequent perception test, adults rated children’s certainty in clips used for labelling. It appeared that older children and children in competition expressed their confidence level more clearly than younger children and children in collaboration.
AgaliotisI.KalyvaE. (2008). Nonverbal social interaction skills of children with learning disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 29, 1–10.
2.
BradyJ. E.NewcombA. F.HartupW. W. (1983). Contexts and companion’s behaviour as determinants of cooperation and competition in school-age children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 36, 396–412.
3.
BrennanS. E.WilliamsM. (1995). The feeling of another’s knowing: Prosody and filled pauses as cues to listeners about the metacognitive states of speakers. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 383–398.
4.
ButterfieldE. C.NelsonT. O.PeckV. (1988). Developmental aspects of the feeling of knowing. Developmental Psychology, 24, 654–663.
5.
CorleyM.StewartO. W. (2008). Hesitation disfluencies in spontaneous speech: The meaning of um. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2, 589–602.
6.
DePauloB. M. (1992). Nonverbal behaviour and self-presentation. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 203–243.
7.
DeutschM. (1949). A theory of cooperation and competition. Human Relations, 2, 129–152.
8.
EkmanP.FriesenW. V. (1975). Unmasking the face. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
9.
EkmanP.FriesenW. V. (1978). The facial acting coding system. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists’ Press.
10.
EkmanP.OsterH. (1979). Facial expressions of emotions. Annual Review of Psychology, 30, 527–554.
GneppJ. G.HessD. L. R. (1986). Children’s understanding of verbal and facial display rules. Developmental Psychology, 22, 103–108.
13.
HartJ. T. (1965). Memory and the feeling-of-knowing experience. Journal of Educational Psychology, 56, 208–216.
14.
JamesonA.NelsonT. O.LeonesioR. J.NarensL. (1993). Feelings of another person’s knowing. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 320–335.
15.
JohnsonD. W.JohnsonR. T. (1974). Instructional goal structure: Cooperative, competitive, or individualistic. Review of Educational Research, 44, 213–240.
16.
KelleyH.ThibautJ. (1969). Group problem solving. In LindzeyG.AronsonE. (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
17.
KierasJ. E.TobinR. M.GrazianoW. G.RothbartM. K. (2005). You can’t always get what you want: Effortful control and young children’s responses to undesirable gifts. Psychological Science, 16, 391–396.
18.
KimbleC. E.SeidelS. D. (1991). Vocal signs of confidence. Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour, 15, 99–105.
19.
KnappM. L.HallJ. A. (2010). Nonverbal communication in human interaction (7th ed.). Wadsworth, USA: Thomson.
20.
KoriatA. (1993). How do we know what we know? The accessibility model of the feeling of knowing. Psychological Review, 100, 609–639.
21.
KrahmerE.SwertsM. (2005). How children and adults produce and perceive uncertainty in audiovisual speech. Language and Speech, 48, 29–53.
22.
LocklK.SchneiderW. (2002). Developmental trends in children’s feeling-of-knowing judgments. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 26, 327–333.
23.
MadsenM. C.ShapiraA. (1970). Cooperative and competitive behaviour of urban Afro-American, Anglo-American, Mexican-American, and Mexican village children. Developmental Psychology, 3, 16–20.
24.
MatsumotoD.Hee YooS.HiramayaS.PetrovaG. (2005). Development and validation of a measure of display rule knowledge: the display rule assessment inventory. Emotion, 5, 23–40.
25.
NelsonT. (1993). Metacognition; Core readings. New Jersey, USA: Prentice Hall.
26.
NelsonT.NarensL. (1990). Metamemory: A theoretical framework and new findings. The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 26, 125–141.
27.
PiagetJ. (1950). The psychology of intelligence. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
28.
Pon-BarryH.ShieberS. M. (2011). Recognizing uncertainty in speech. Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, 11, 1–11.
29.
ReisenzeinR.BördgenS.HoltberndT.MatzD. (2006). Evidence for strong dissociation between emotion and facial displays: the case of surprise. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 295–315.
30.
RichmondB. O.WeinerG. P. (1978). Cooperation and competition among young children as a function of ethnic grouping, grade, sex, and reward condition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 64, 329–334.
31.
RosethC. J.JohnsonD. W.JohnsonR. T. (2008). Promoting early adolescents’ achievement and peer relationships: the effects of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic goal structures. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 223–246.
32.
SaarniC. (1979). Children’s understanding of display rules for expressive behaviour. Developmental Psychology, 15, 424–429.
33.
SaarniC. (1981). Emotional experience and regulation of expressive behaviour. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Boston, MA.
34.
SaarniC. (1984). An observational study of children’s attempt to monitor their expressive behaviour. Child Development, 55, 1504–1513.
35.
ShahidS.KrahmerE.SwertsM. (2008). Alone or together: exploring the effect of physical co-presence on the emotional expressions of game playing children across cultures. In PanosMarkopoulosBorisRuyterWijnandIjsselsteijnDuncanRowland (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Fun and Games (pp. 9–105). Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
36.
SmithV. L.ClarkH. H. (1993). On the course of answering questions. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 25–38.
37.
StoneM.OhI. (2008). Modeling facial expression of uncertainty in conversational animation. In WachsmuthI.KnoblichG. (Eds.), Modeling communication (pp. 57–76). Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.
38.
SwertsM. (2011). Correlates of social awareness in the visual prosody of growing children. Laboratory Phonology, 2, 381–402.
39.
SwertsM.KrahmerE. (2005). Audiovisual prosody and feeling of knowing. Journal of Memory and Language, 53, 81–94.
40.
WagnerH. L.LeeV. (1999). Facial behaviour alone and in the presence of others. In: PhilippotP.FeldmanR. S.CoatsE. J. (Eds.), The social context of nonverbal behaviour (pp. 262–286). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
41.
WollermannC.LasarcykE. (2007). Modeling and perceiving of (un)certainty in articulatory speech synthesis. In Proceedings of the 6th ISCA Workshop on Speech Synthesis (pp. 40–45), Bonn, Germany.
42.
WollermannC.SchröderB. (2009). Effects of exhaustivity and uncertainty on audiovisual focus production. In Proceedings of AVSP, International Conference on Audio-Visual Speech Processing.
43.
YamamotoK.SuzukiN. (2006). The effects of social interaction and personal relationships on facial expressions. Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour, 30, 167–179.
