Yumi Nixon and Peter Bull

Abstract

Nonverbal perception training was carried out with British and Japanese university students. The main aim of the training was to examine whether increasing cultural awareness in nonverbal communication styles leads to an improvement in within- and cross-cultural perceptual accuracy. The perceptual assessment was carried out using the British and Japanese Social Perception Task (BJSPT) which is based on the Interpersonal Perception Task ( IPT) (Costanzo & Archer, 1989). The results showed that the methods used in the training sessions were effective in improving cross-cultural perceptual accuracy. The British training group made more improvement in the perception of Japanese scenes than British scenes, while the Japanese training groups made more improvement on British scenes than Japanese scenes. The different skills involved in within- and cross-cultural perception are discussed in the light of the results.