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Non-verbal communication matters because much of what a patient communicates, distress, discomfort, or trust, comes through channels other than the words they actually say. Non-verbal communication includes kinesics (body movement, gesture, and facial expression), proxemics (use of physical space and distance), paralanguage (tone, pitch, and pace of speech, separate from its words), and eye contact. For example, imagine a patient who says 'I'm fine' while avoiding eye contact, sitting rigidly, and speaking in a flat, quiet tone: the non-verbal channel is telling a very different story from the words alone. In practice, attending to these cues is often essential for accurately assessing a patient's mental state.

Kinesics covers posture, gesture, and facial expression, and includes universal expressions of basic emotion described by Ekman, such as fear, disgust, and anger. Proxemics describes how physical distance signals intimacy or formality, and the culturally comfortable distance for a conversation varies considerably between cultures. Paralanguage covers HOW something is said, tone, pitch, volume, and pace, rather than the words themselves, so a monotone, slow, quiet voice can signal low mood even when the words spoken sound neutral. Take a patient from a culture with a different comfortable conversational distance who stands further from the clinician than expected: this may simply reflect cultural norms, not aloofness or a lack of rapport. In practice, clinicians should interpret non-verbal cues in the context of a patient's cultural background, rather than assuming a single universal meaning for every gesture or distance.

• How should Mehrabian's often-quoted figures for the impact of words, tone and body language be interpreted?
• Which term describes the use of touch as a channel of communication?
• A patient says he feels fine while avoiding eye contact and speaking in a flat, quiet voice. What should the clinician do?

• Non-verbal communication, conveyed through body, space, tone, and eye contact, unlike verbal content, which is the actual words and their meaning.
• Kinesics, body movement, gesture, and facial expression, whereas proxemics is the use of physical space and distance.
• Paralanguage, tone, pitch, and pace of speech, rather than the words themselves, which is verbal content.
• Speech and language disorders, affect the production or understanding of language itself, unlike non-verbal communication, which accompanies language rather than forming it.

• The studies used spoken words and facial expressions rather than written text.
• Paralanguage concerns tone, pitch and pace rather than touch.
• This is the popular misuse that the original author explicitly disowned.
• In the original paradigm the verbal channel carried the smallest weight.
• No such cross-linguistic confirmation exists.

• Name the learning, social or research principle being tested before reading the options.
• Identify the antecedent, behaviour, consequence or cognitive process in the vignette.
• Compare the direction of effect with the nearest competing principle.
• Apply the same rule to a new example to confirm that the answer transfers.