paralanguage

n. the vocal but nonverbal elements of communication by speech. Paralanguage includes not only suprasegmental features of speech, such as tone and stress, but also such factors as volume and speed of delivery, voice quality, hesitations, and nonlinguistic sounds, such as sighs, whistles, or groans. These paralinguistic cues (or paralinguistic features) can be enormously important in shaping the total meaning of an utterance; they can, for example, convey the fact that a speaker is angry or sarcastic when this would not be apparent from the same words written down. In some uses, the term is extended to include gestures, facial expressions, and other aspects of body language.

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Psychology term of the day

May 9th 2024

overmatching

1. unnecessary matching: the pairing of research participants on an excessive number of characteristics or on characteristics having little or no potential influence upon the outcome of interest. For example, a researcher investigating a new drug treatment for cancer might create two groups whose members are of the same age and sex, administering the drug to one group and a placebo to the other group. Such group comparability would allow the researcher greater validity in attributing any changes between them to the treatment rather than to sex or age differences. If, however, the researcher were to pair the groups on such additional factors as area of residence and household income, overmatching would be present and likely to mask the true nature of the relationship under investigation and lead to statistical bias, such as by reducing the power and efficiency of analyses.

2. see matching law.