Hi Lawry, I'm sorry, I can't add anything more to what I observed -- except perhaps that not only were his verbal responses delayed but also the smiles and mock grimaces that he elected to make from time to time. Otherwise, the stillness of his face and hands was not in any way unusual for politicians and people in his position who are used to controlling themselves carefully when being interviewed. However, the delays in his responses -- and the constancy of those pauses, whatever the difficulty of the question -- were those of a master, in my opinion. As said before, I interpret this behaviour as a consequence of long-time experience in considering every question carefully, even the apparently innocent ones. In short, I thought Perele's performance was that of a superbly trained diplomat, or senior mandarin, unlike that of, say, Rumsfeld whose body language is extremely labile and thus, quite readable.
I can't help you with any other observations -- I was concentrating mainly on what Perle was saying. I can't remember precisely what happened when he was obviously momentarily thrown by a couple of cleverly-phrased questions from the ex-ambassador and Dimbleby himself. It would be fascinating to see a slow-motion replay of his demeanour during those two brief episodes. I suspect his facial muscles went haywire for a few microseconds! Keith At 07:23 21/03/03 -0500, you wrote: >Hi, Keith, > >Sorry for the delay in getting back: things have been busy. > >Many thanks for the report on Perle's body language. Very interesting. Most >people don't notice things as precisely or acutely, so appreciate the info >and the effort you put into reporting them. > >Did you notice anything about eye movements, by any chance, and if so, can >you associated a pattern of eye movements with a pattern of subject matter >being discussed? I would be very interested in any other observations that >you can recall: muscle tone changes, skin color changes, head tilts, depth >and pace of breathing, tone, volume, timbre of the voice, unusual word >choice, etc. > >The two instances of what I would call incongruencies that you report may or >may not be significant; the incongruence can be genuine, but the substantive >significance of an incongruence must be is unclear until the subject's >patterns are better known. > >I don't think that any of this (or intelligence either, though I am less >knowledgeable about that) is genetic, or at least if it is in any degree, >the reliability of the association would be much too low and low-resolution >to be useful in understanding or reading an individual. The kinds of >patterns that I am looking for seem to cut across cultures and ethnicities, >with vastly more variation among members of a group than between groups. >Over the years I have come to discount generalizations about groups, and to >pay attention to individuals to understand (those) individuals. Of course, >that increases the cognitive and research burden immensely. Did you ever see >the book, Body Language? It tried to suggest, for example, that some >postures meant certain things about people, universally. Many people bought >into the notion both because it suggested ways of understanding people and >because it was easy. But, instead, it was misleading. > >We can now model the cognitive processes in individuals, but it remains a >person-by-person undertaking, given the levels of precision we need. > >Again, many thanks, and I hope you might be able to add more, along the >lines I ask, above. > >Cheers, >Lawry ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
