Nonverbal communication of affect in preschool in children: relationships with personality and skin conductance.

A slide-viewing paradigm measuring the tendency to communicate accurate nonverbal messages via spontaneous facial expressions and gestures was applied to 13 male and 11 female preschoolers (aged 4-6 years). The children watched 16 emotionally loaded color slides while, unknown to them, their mothers viewed their reactions via television. The children's skin conductance (SC) was monitored during the experiment, and they had been rated by two teachers on a new scale of affect expression developed from Jones' externalizer/internalizer distinction. High communication accuracy was associated with low SC responding. Rated expressiveness was associated with high communication accuracy and low SC responding. Sex differences appeared in the pattern of relations between the affect expression scale and the measures of communication accuracy and SC response.