Children’s Perceptions of Social Status Studying the Effects of Non- Direct Verbal Communication and Direct Non-Verbal Communication on Children’s Perception of Social Status

vCurrent research has been focused on the effects of social cues, and how individuals use all different types of stimuli to form attitudes about themselves, members of their group, and those that they consider outside their group. However, there is little research focused on understanding the developmental thresholds in children around nonverbal cues, specifically at what age are they able to recognize them, as well as if they possess the ability to use nonverbal cues to infer other factors of social status and hierarchy. In this study we attempt to begin addressing that question by testing out a sample group of adults (n = 96) to view a video of a teacher giving direction to students and using non directive language paired with directive nonverbal communication. This study was interested in testing our methodology so that it could be tailored to younger children, as well as understand how successful people were at picking up on nonverbal social cues, and if/ how much they used them to make social inferences around ability and social status. Results from this study showed that there were significant effects and that people were not only able to recognize large amounts of nonverbal cues, but were also able to utilize those cues to create social rankings and modify those rankings based on new novel additions. Future research aims to utilize this methodology on children and test their thresholds for nonverbal cues and levels of social based inferencing abilitie