Explanations of non-verbal communication

Asked for two ways NVC is adaptive, a candidate writes that two different expressions each 'increase survival'. Both are right, but increasing survival IS the definition of adaptive — the conclusion of every point, not a point itself. What differs is the ROUTE: one signal alters another's behaviour, the other prepares your own body. Change the route, not the example.

Asked to explain NVC using Darwin, candidates write 'NVC is communicating without words, e.g. facial expressions and gestures' — an accurate 10.1.4 answer that explains nothing, so on 10.1.5 it scores zero. Test before writing: does your sentence say inherited, innate or passed on? If not, you have described the behaviour, not explained its origin.

Scenario answers score zero if generic. 'This shows Darwin because NVC is inherited' uses nothing from the scenario, so AO2 is lost — and AO3 needs AO2. Not application: the name, repeating the stem, copying the scenario across. Application: run the scenario's own detail through the mechanism — narrowed eyes and squared shoulders are muscle tension for fight readiness.

The explanation must sit on a correctly defined behaviour. Recorded slips: personal space is the distance a person feels comfortable at, not 'wanting to be alone'; eye contact must be named as NVC and tied to an emotion, so 'staring' fails; gestures are physical movement, confused with facial expression; proxemics is distance appropriate to a relationship.

A result is what was observed; a conclusion is what it means for the theory. Asked for a conclusion, candidates restate a figure, which scores nothing. '75% of an isolated group matched the fear face' is a result; the conclusion is that people who could not have copied it still produce it, as an inherited account predicts.

An improvement asks what to do DIFFERENTLY next time; candidates give a weakness — what is wrong — instead. 'The sample was one country only' is a weakness; the improvement is the fix: test people from several communities with no contact with one another, so a shared expression cannot be put down to shared media. State the change, and ideally the problem it solves.

'Only humans use NVC': animals plainly communicate without words — a dog bares its teeth — so a shared display is EVIDENCE for a common origin, not against it (the human-animal contrast is 10.1.3: language, displacement). 'Adaptive means deliberate': nobody decides to tense their jaw; the benefit explains why the behaviour spread, not why anyone performs it.

'Yuki (2007) disproves Darwin': it shows a difference in how a face is READ (Western weight the mouth, Eastern the eyes), not that expressions are learned — production looks inherited, attention is cultural. 'Universality proves it': shared media could spread expressions, so it shows a behaviour is shared, not why it is shared.