Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy
Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy , or DANVA for short , is a psychological test that can be used to measure the understanding of non-verbal communication on emotional scales. Its application falls within the field of differential psychology . It can be used to test how well a person can understand expressions.
The test was first presented by Nowicki and Duke in 1989 within the American Psychological Society and published in 1994 in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior . Today it is used in a further developed form, the DANVA2 .
Carrying out the test
The subject to be tested is presented with photos and voice recordings and has to decide on an assessment. He is instructed to assign an emotion to each item . He has four possible answers. He has to choose exactly one and may not change his mind afterwards. The presentation time is usually limited to a few seconds, the time to consider the decision is not.
The strengths of the test are its ease of use, which is currently made even easier by a computer-aided process that also supports data export, which works well with SPSS . The instructions are simple to give and understand. The weaknesses of this test are of a conceptual nature and stem from differences of opinion within expression psychology regarding the interpretation of the content of expressive behavior.
Structure of the DANVA2
The test currently (as of 2006) consists of five subtests, which in turn are divided into items :
- Adult Faces 2 (AF)
- Child Faces 2 (CF)
- Adult Paralanguage 2 (AP)
- Child Paralanguage 2 (CP)
- Adult Postures 2 (POS)
Each subtest has the same four scales (answer options) ( happiness , sadness , anger and fear ), which are also basic emotions . Two degrees of expressiveness are distinguished per scale (high and low). The subtests have a different number of items and can be presented in a longer or shorter form. 24 items per subtest are practicable.
The subtests were constructed independently of one another, as there is no uniform theoretical view of emotional expression behavior in facial, gestural and phonic performance areas. The subtests also correlate poorly with one another. DePaulo and Rosenthal (1979) found a median correlation of .16 in a meta study of 19 projects . In application, clustering (or another data reduction method ) on the same subjects over several subtests is therefore problematic.
The mimic subtests consist of photographs and are based on criteria, whereby the work of Paul Ekman played a role. The test persons were presented with an emotion and were asked to behave in a way that, in their opinion, fits this emotion. They were photographed in the process. The resulting material was validated on a random sample (n = 185) of people of different age groups, who were asked to indicate whether the image corresponds to what they imagined under the emotion. Today the DANVA2 is more finely adjusted than the DANVA, which was originally developed for children from 6 to 10 years of age and contained fewer, but clearly more differentiated images.
Linguistic attachment
The facial expression subtests are not language-related. The Adult Postures 2 (POS) - Subtest is difficult to understand in Europe and should be used with caution, as it contains emblematic expressions and culturally determined gestures. The paralanguage subtests can only be used in English.
Quality criteria
The test can be useful for people aged 3 and over.
DANVA2-AF
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Internal consistency
- Alpha between 0.64 and 0.83
- depending on the author up to 0.9
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Retest reliability
- is estimated to be stable over time, e.g.
- over two months r = 0.84, (n = 45); Nowicki and Carton (1993)
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Convergent validity
- The test correlates in the middle range with other tests that measure the same construct.
- depending on the author between r = 0.48 and 0.58
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Discriminative validity
- The test does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about personality traits, especially not with regard to intelligence.
- The test does not allow any statements about social competence.
criticism
This test measures expressive comprehension verbally and with a fixed snapshot. The ability to assign a word and the logical ability to rule out alternatives are also recorded. The temporal dimension of the expression pattern is missing. But it is precisely in the movement that the expressiveness lies.