Nonverbal communication in adolescents

Adolescence, a difficult stage, where every human being goes through it, includes physical and psychological changes and there are some needs.

Non-verbal communication, gestures, gestures, positions, the mimicry of the hands, the looks and our clothing, all contribute to express who we are and what we want and above all where we are going.

The young person in his non-verbal communication expresses many changes and needs, we can understand them just by looking for what his body expresses.

Describing even better the adolescent's behavior in certain cases will help us to get to know the non-verbal communication of young people and, therefore, the problems and concerns they go through and suffer from.

Although it depends a lot on where the teenager comes from, his family, his childhood, also the mere fact of living in an environment with certain characteristics determines a certain attitude and therefore a take on personality in which he will feel increasingly calm, develop as a person who is and who wants to become.

Will the young teenager become a person of good? Thousands of questions have to be asked when being parents or teachers, regarding the personality and behavior of adolescents and one way to find the answers is to learn to recognize what gestures transmit, what looks say and what perhaps words deny but facts check.

INTRODUCTION

How are we adolescents, what are the characteristics that denote us as such. What about non-verbal communication? It does not seem to go into the issue of adolescence but to our surprise, people communicate most of our feelings through gestures and gestures. Especially adolescents, all development from this age to becoming an adult is determined by what he feels at this stage, by what he does and does not do. The great psychologists and psychiatrists when caring for a patient try to understand more than anything their non-verbal language before trying to understand what they express in words. Why is it so important then? Because support in adolescence is an essential factor for young people to become good people and contribute to a better tomorrow.But if the adolescent cannot speak or is difficult to ask for help, we must recognize as parents or teachers or people who are in charge of their education and training what the adolescent wants to give us, their concerns and needs. Perhaps the same teenager can help himself; But he needs a base, a first step that someone favors, a person who has already gone through the stage in which he is living.

Through readings, research research, field observations and my own experience, I have developed the following topic based on topics that I have also partially carried out in my career, that is why I present what I define as: adolescence and its non-verbal communication and also came to conclude certain observations and own definitions. At the beginning I will give complete definitions about the adolescence stage, continuing with some details, then I will define the concept of non-verbal communication and the elements that intervene the most from the point of view of the young adolescent and at the end I will make a link of both topics to finish with a conclusion.

1. Adolescents

According to a document provided by the National University, adolescence generally corresponds to the second decade of the individual's life, and is commonly defined as a period of development characterized by biological, psychological and social changes, the main characteristic of which is that the adolescent is in in aptitude for reproduction, which induces him to acquire new social roles (UNAM: 2002).

1.1 General characteristics

We can know by means of a general study of observation and further still, interacting with an adolescent that this in the social aspect behaves in a certain way. The young man finds a group with which he identifies and lives united with the group to a greater degree than at any other time in his life; social life reaches its maximum intensity in "the gang or the small group." Following what the text infers, the gang forms spontaneously, without adult intervention, and does not include all possible participants, but rather a selection of members. The popularity or unpopularity of the members is noted. It is autocratic and hierarchical. It frees the young person from the bondage of the adult, thus freeing him from his inferiority complex. They are contradictory to what the adult is. Opponent.The first peer-to-peer relationships begin to develop. The adolescent begins to search for his own identity, begins to consider himself as something separate from the rest, from others and as one in himself. This search begins in the groups of friends with whom he identifies and differentiates himself from adults. The need to self affirm its importance and its value appears, to be something special. The search for the singular that distinguishes it from the rest begins. Clothing brands are a good example. The desire to imitate idols appears, to show their athletic qualities, to compete. This search process results in the acquisition of an identity accepted and enhanced by the social group or on the contrary, deviated from the norm. It may quickly stop limiting capacity development,or conversely that the search lasts a long time, prolonging the process of confusion. The family and its development in it and also in the social environment that the adolescent unfolds will determine in part this process.

CIPAJ (2002), Mental and emotional health of young people, http://www.zaragoza.es/ciudad/sectores/jovenes/cipaj, November 2002

1.1.1 Body image and self-esteem

• Body image in adolescence focuses its problems on these factors: identity and self-esteem.

• Physical appearance: departing from the norm of beauty will be disturbing. And getting closer to it is associated with increased popularity, increased self-confidence, self-confidence, and more contributing factors.

• Satisfaction with body image is going to be a determining factor in showing off the power and ability of your body and predisposition to work it.

• For this reason, the recognition of the body itself, the acceptance and the sports development of it, favor the adolescent's self-esteem and safety.

CIPAJ (2002), Mental and emotional health of young people, November 2002

1.2 Problems in adolescents:

There are various problems in adolescents that are a reaction to the internal and external changes they undergo, as well as their communication with the environment. Problems such as anxiety, school phobia and lack of motivation, in addition to poor performance in study strategies. Their personal relationships may run into lack of social skills that affect their development as a person, shyness, loneliness, social anxiety or antisocial behaviors (aggressiveness or drug use) or relationship with conflicting friends, are factors that a teenager can turn to when relating to others without being sure of himself. The adolescent is prone to falling into depression that is demonstrated by suicidal behavior or insecurity. By interacting with her parents, the teenager does not communicate,.reinforces family violence and fights or discussions that may arise, claims the absence of rules or lack of control. With their relationships that they may have with the couple, particularities of lack of love or emotional breakdowns emerge, as well as the feeling of emotional incompetence and communication difficulties. There are feeding problems: anorexia, bulimia or mixed problems. Lastly, problems that only concern the adolescent, whether of their image or person: self-esteem, destruction of the self and the search for identity (CIPAJ: 2002).There are feeding problems: anorexia, bulimia or mixed problems. Lastly, problems that only concern the adolescent, whether of their image or person: self-esteem, destruction of the self and the search for identity (CIPAJ: 2002).There are feeding problems: anorexia, bulimia or mixed problems. Lastly, problems that only concern the adolescent, whether of their image or person: self-esteem, destruction of the self and the search for identity (CIPAJ: 2002).

2. Non-verbal communication

What is it? Non-verbal communication is all those movements that our body performs, which are a reaction to an emotion or feeling that has manifested itself in our person. Whether through gestures, gestures, postures, looks and positions of our body.

Venturini explains in his work that when we talk about syntax in body language we are talking about that articulation of gestures that make up an experiential and emotional discourse capable of vibrating, by saying vibrate it is understood that it can make the body react. Of course, there is no talk of a syntax that can be written, analyzed and studied rationally as it is done with the syntax of spoken language. The author speaks of a more intuitive process linked to processes that we do not recognize that take place below consciousness (Venturini: 2002).

Carlos Salinas helps us to introduce ourselves to the subject in a better way, he maintains that at first glance it seems that we are the owners of our messages and that they alone express nothing more than what we want to express. It seems then that everyone, or most, know how to keep quiet when it suits them, and to express in a rough way what they want. Although it defines that communication problems are that we say more than we believe and less than we think. However, you may find it difficult to round a thought to put it clearly in favor of the receiver, the person who listens.

Explaining the phrase better: saying much more than thinking, from the same author, what happens is that we not only transmit meanings with clothes and other objects of personal use; not only with the car or any other more or less expensive possession; not only with our way of pronouncing the language we speak; not just with the intonation and the silences with which we set the rhythm of our speech. Also with gestures, especially with those precipitates that our face, and in general our body, manifest in microseconds and that transmit an impression as fleeting as penetrating. (Salinas, 2002)

Salinas provides us with a very surprising fact expressed by the social anthropologist, Edward T. Hall, where he assures that 60% of our communication is not verbal, which means that we use our gestures in a more unconscious than conscious way. In the same investigation by the same author, he provides data from Mario Pei, an expert in communications. Pei estimates that we can produce around 700,000 different physical signs, and if we focus on the face alone, he can produce 250,000 expressions according to expert Birdwhistell.

5,000 defined gestures and 1,000 different positions have been cataloged, data maintained by Salinas, in his writing. This is why it is very difficult to establish concrete foundations about what the gestures are and what they are (Salinas, 2002).

2.1 Elements of non-verbal communication

Already understanding better what non-verbal communication means, although we have already said that it is a very relative subject and can have many ways of giving and reflecting itself, because it occurs in human beings, which of course cannot be studied as they easily and always find in their attitude a way to make an exception to the rule, because even establishing behavioral patterns they can react totally differently to what is determined.

Even so, there are elements within non-verbal communication that occur in human beings and although they may be contradictory to many ways of being, they are found in most people or in a generalized way.

Moriano stands out as the first factor in non-verbal communication: Social cognition.

Social cognition happens when someone unknown approaches us and the following processes occur:

1. Our relationship with those who approach will depend on the recognition of emotions that we make, that is, the diagnosis about their state of mind. This diagnosis is made from observation of her face and other non-verbal cues.

2. Inevitably, we form an impression on it, a relatively coherent image, for which we will unite various explanatory elements that we have been able to collect in those first moments of interaction: physical appearance, clothing, way of speaking, attractiveness and other factors plus.

3. We will make causal attributions, that is, we will look for a cause to explain the conduct of said person. Our feelings, thoughts and behaviors regarding such a person will be mediated by the type of cause to which we attribute their behavior.

4. We will use schemes, organized sets of knowledge, which will help us to quickly process the information we are receiving and to make the most appropriate decision possible.

5. Our reaction will be mediated by the processes of social inference, that is, by the way in which we process the information we are receiving, we store it in our memory, we put it in relation to other information that we already had, we recover it and we apply it to the case.

On all of these depends our success or failure when communicating with the person (Moriano, 2001).

Another factor included within social cognition is: the first impression.

Which defines Moriano as a process of perception of one person by another that takes place in a very short time. The duration of the first impression between 2 and 4 seconds in the face-to-face meeting. What are some of the components of the first impression: what does it look like, skin color, sex, age, appearance (includes posture, hair, dress, accessories, smells, colors) facial expressions, eye contact, movements, personal space, touch; how I speak: speed, volume, quality or timbre and articulation or diction; what I say: the words, how I approach issues, what I think and how I present it, the negative that includes filler terms, restrictive expressions, exclusive terms, the positive that includes direct and affirmative style and above all the last factor that is how I hear: don't interrupt,give a return signal, we hear and understand your message, use the terms of the interlocutor, respond to them and show interest by asking for clarification of what we hear (Moriano, 2001). (Look at annex 1).

Postures learned: Naturalness.

There is a natural language with deep anthropological roots, with which we constantly speak, although it is not controlled on the conscious plane (Moriano, 2001).

How to get to Natural correction?

The ideal way is to see us act, according to the author. The video recording and the friendly advice will determine which gesture is superfluous and which attitude is correct, adjusted or expressive. Although the author expresses that having learned, what gestures say will help us to be freer and so that our second degree naturalness is in accordance with the learned universal code, of the most elementary positions (Moriano: 2001).

How is the occupation of my space?

It seems that the human being walks through a bubble, which he feels must be between him and the others, Moriano defines.

The author proposes six types of distances:

1. Contact distance: people communicate by touch, smell and body temperature.

2. In the next personal distance, the wife may remain comfortable in her husband's bubble, but maybe she feels uncomfortable if another woman tries, just as a girl does not try to be inside her best friend's boyfriend bubble, would make things uncomfortable between friends and between friend and boyfriend.

3. Far personal distance: limited by the extension of the arm, limit of the physical domain.

4. Close social distance: the people who work together in a company will perhaps adopt this distance to talk.

5. Distant social distance: they are formal conversations. The desks of important people are usually very wide to keep a certain distance.

6. Public distance: it is adequate to deliver speeches or some very rigid and formal forms of conversation (Moriano, 2001). (See annex 2).

The continuous presence gives birth to a friendship. With loved ones the territory itself decreases. And the short distance causes our intimacy.

People who are sitting nearby are intimate and in solidarity, even if they do not speak to each other. Those who do not want to create a relationship flee as soon as they can (Moriano, 2001).

Standing, the person supposes an attitude of service, of availability proper to the dynamism of the leader. By holding on to a table, to the pen, it denotes a need for protection (Moriano, 2001).

Seats of the same height reflect a sense of equality. The lack of seats in the conference room or the classroom gives a democratic and participatory air (Moriano, 2001).

In the school all the students are seated at the same level, the benches are positioned at the same height, because they are all the same and are thus treated.

The gestures are an escape or rest valve to the communicative tension. The main activity is interrupted to introduce stereotypical, well-known acts of grooming, grooming, food ingestion, and other motor skills. We fix the tie, the blouse. We clean our glasses, we yawn, we put our hands to our nose and ears, we fix our nails, we light a cigarette, all this to be comfortable with us and our environment, but we must also avoid those who disturb those present, for being repeated or in bad taste (Moriano, 2001).

The hands, their job is to work, defend themselves or attack. When we communicate, they should not do any of this, only perhaps, demonstrate that they are in what is said. They won't be still, they could only in some moments. The words, the meaning of what we say, will move them without us noticing or without having to think about the gesture. All these positions are concluded by Moriano in his research (Moriano, 2001).

2.2 Nonverbal behavior and emotions

In the human being, when experiencing an emotion, it generally includes a set of cognitions, attitudes and beliefs about the world, which we use to assess a specific situation and, therefore, influence the way in which that situation is perceived. (Psychoactive: 2002)

Some components of the physiological and involuntary emotions are the same for everyone:

• tremor

• blush

• sweating

• Fast breathing

• Pupillary dilation

• Increased heart rate

(Psychoactive: 2002)

The aforementioned data are for any reaction to an emotion and all are given inside the body without necessarily having to know anything, or it is said that without having a cultural or learning level, they are simply given as happens with instincts, which are They carry inside without necessarily learning something about them.

But when people, contexts and learning are already involved, everything we react to and the way we did it is because it was already learned in a certain way and molded to our person and way of being, everything that is around us and above all closer fosters that when suffering a feeling, we react in such a way, as well as an emotion or perception about something.

3. What makes the non-verbal communication that occurs in any person different from that of a teenager?

According to the author Carlos Salinas, each emotion has its spontaneous mimicry (Salinas: 2002).

What do you mean by that? What depends on what we feel, we make our body react through stimuli that are denoted by gestures or body movements. This was verified before when we talked about emotions and their reaction.

Adolescence has been highlighted as a stage through which every human being passes, in which certain characteristics that make it as such are distinguished. In addition to the human being undergoing physical development and growth, a great number of emotional changes also take place.

When we say that the adolescent needs and is looking for a gang or group to which they join, we can place the following example:

A 19-year-old girl comes to Monterrey to study, she comes from Mexicali and her purpose in itself is only to study. From the first day of school and even earlier, the day before falling asleep to wake up to the first day of class, he cannot fall asleep, this is nerves, perhaps a little insecurity and doubt prevails. When she arrives at school, she enters her classroom, gives her name, age and the city where she comes from. At the end of the class in the ten minute break, look for friends from Mexicali with whom you can be while waiting for the next class, time passes and little by little through the aforementioned factors, self-presentation, physical proximity, the first impression and the security that it brings will find a group with which to talk, share and even go out of class. Even if I tried,I always want to be surrounded by people who strengthen their security, also realizing that others accept them for their ideas and traditions, accent or way of speaking, their self-esteem is maintained and even more if others seek help or support, it rises.

The first day of school he must have sweated, walked quite quickly at the time of the change of classrooms, his way of dressing perhaps a little more tidy, gestures such as the crossing of arms, considerable physical distance, observant gaze and in constant movement happened, perhaps facing forward, depending on her attitude and personality, this young woman being a certain person her gaze went ahead without necessarily looking at something specific, but by knowing her you would know perfectly well that she is not from Monterrey, that it is her first day of school, who feels a little uncomfortable, nervous and excited and that her mind has made first impressions of everything that crosses in front of her.

Months later, he dresses more comfortably, walks around him and greets someone he knows, his walk is much calmer, he thinks about what he has to do in terms of tasks and jobs, he avoids people he may already know they are not to his liking and he meets with the group that best considered his relationship and identification. She already knew what her environment is, her reality in which she lives, she already has an idea of what the days will be like while she is inside the school and she is sure of what she has and should do.

Fear is a factor that fosters the development of gestures and gestures that help protect the adolescent or even the human being. Once this factor has been controlled, the person does not necessarily need these gestures or maybe they act according to some gestures, but they change because the feeling has changed.

Insecurity is a characteristic of the adolescent stage, and the body movements that give it away the most are seeing that they do not feel comfortable in the situation or context in which they find themselves or with what they feel, through body signs.

Pérez talks about the following acts: tugging at the ear, biting his nails, playing with his hair (Pérez: 2002). All of these generally discover the insecurity that you feel at that moment, or how when you walk you cross your arms. Each gesture or movement or position implies something that the person feels.

Sensitivity is another characteristic that develops in young people on a larger scale, as it is the stage where they learn about reality and everything that happens in it, sadness when facing world problems, anger caused by injustice, poverty, ignorance. While apparently young teenagers seem to care nothing, they want to know more than anyone about the problems humanity suffers from.

Self-esteem influences everything you do, feel, and say. A young man with high self-esteem will want to be noticed and stand out in a group or among people, a young man with low self-esteem will try to lose himself and not cause any movement or comment that draws attention.

As the writing continues we realize that non-verbal communication is directly linked to emotions and feelings. And in adolescents a lot is given because it is the stage when emotions are awakening.

Feelings of attraction, search for a partner comes up very often, again the feeling of insecurity arises, maybe he will not like me, or I will not be enough for this person and only with the gaze will I become the most personal contact let it happen. Growth, learning, maturity, order and your development as a person will sooner or later get to the point where you remove a lot of insecurity and low self-esteem and are encouraged to take the first step in meeting perhaps your next partner.

CONCLUSION

After understanding a little what is defined as non-verbal communication and appreciating more closely what a teenager is suffering at this stage. We can conclude with several key words: emotions, gestures, gestures, feelings and needs. These five are related to each other because without some others would not give each other, without an emotion there would be no gesture, no matter how small it may be.

We need to focus on this stage so that as a university, teacher, partner, friend and father we contribute to the best growth of the teenager. It is normal for adolescents to express their fears and concerns through their non-verbal behavior and to acquire without knowing that it was requested, it is also helpful because there are thousands of people in the world and the treatment between them is less human and Problems that may seem small can become big, suicides, vandalism, drug trafficking and drug addiction, they may have been and it is almost certain that they were normal young people but that in their growth something happened to them badly and although they could not get help alone either nobody offered to help them because nobody realized, if these problems can be avoided the world would be much better.

There are gestures given worldwide, or in a single culture there may be several common gestures, but in each person a specific gesture is also developed by their personality in which they release and express their way of being. If verbal communication is so important and only occurs in 20%. How important should 80% non-verbal communication be?