Japanese students excel in learning when teachers show nonverbal warmth.
The study looked at how Japanese students in Tokyo respond to their teachers' nonverbal behaviors. They found that students' perception of how much they learned was strongly linked to how warm and engaging their teachers were. The researchers created a new tool to measure these behaviors and found that Japanese students react similarly to American and European students. This suggests that cultural differences in nonverbal communication can affect how students learn, and adapting teaching methods to fit different cultures could be important for effective education.