Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Production in visual non-verbal communication has been studied with the use of various research methods, both qualitative and quantitative. Whereas the former approach investigates the meaning and the structure of a gesture or a pantomime, the latter attempts to characterise low-level motion features in the production of visual non-verbal communication. In this presentation, we focus on the quantitative approach to the study of non-verbal behavior: we compare it with quantitative methods, highlighting main differences between the two approaches, present an overview of previous quantitative research methods, and identify the shortcomings of those methods. Finally, we propose a new method of studying non-verbal communication, which involves the application of motion capture systems, especially ones based on Inertial Measurement Units.