"To understand the body language of people one has to acknowledge the functioning of the brain and its response to the environment". 

In 2018 the 2nd European Congress on Non Verbal Communication will be held in the Netherlands. Experts share their latest research and introduce new methodologies: "We want people to realize body language is part of modern communication sciences".

Chairman Gérard Stokkink is director at Expertisecentrum Lichaamstaal Nederland (ELN). He opens the congress sharing thoughts about body language as part of communication sciences and how emotions refer to bodily movements. Summary: Drs. Herman Ilgen MA brings results from his research at the University of Amsterdam. Dr. Mariska Kret from Leiden University will explain the link between monkeys and human behavior. Drs. N.Roseti did research on the impact of the voice: "people judge how trustworthy you are within half a second". Keynote speaker is Ir. Rabah Aiouaz who will explain characteristics of body language during the interaction and demonstrate new methods to translate bodily messages into concrete information. 

Sprekers/speakers:

Drs. Herman Ilgen focuses on the relationship between repetitive facial micro signals  (Personal Nonverbal Repertoire, PNR) and personality. Together with the University of Amsterdam, Nonverbal Strategy Analysis (INSA) is the first to systematically research this specific field. After a first explorative research project INSA is now researching the relationship between PNR and negotiation or conflict handling styles. INSA also develops applications for various professionals (negotiators, lawyers, mediators, law enforcement, human resources, personal coaches).  The topics are:
• The relevance of repetitive facial actions
• A new perspective: findings in INSA-research projects between 2011-2018: how the dynamics of facial actions contribute to understanding and predicting behavior
• Brain and face: relationship with current academic literature on facial actions, including neuropsychological literature
• Measuring personality and tension levels: practical meaning for various professionals. The presentation will be illustrated with video material.

Dr. Mariska Kret (PhD) works as assistant professor at Leiden University, Cognitive Psychology unit. She started her research in body language in Tilburg and later in Japan to study similar phenomena in chimpanzees. From investigatiing expressions of healthy people, her research has expanded to comparative studies in great apes and patients with mental disorders. She particularly focusus on genuine expressions, beyond control and automatic. With aid of VENI grant from NWO, she studied pupil sizes, influenced by emotions and found people mimic pupil sizes implicating the establishment of trust. With help of the Templeton organization, she focused a new project on the role of emotions in human cooperation, making direct comparisons with bonobos. In her research she combines different methods including MRI, psychophysiology, eye-tracking, pupillometry, hormonal administration and questionnaires assessing individual differences in personality. Dr. Kret is the initiator and leader of CoPAN lab (Comparative Psychology and Affective Neuroscience)  More information on www.mariskakret.com.

Martijn van Agtmaal focusus on COM 2.0 (Gool & Agtmaal, 2017), a model used in psychiatric institutions to detect (growing) emotional behaviour by patients and staff to engage a fitting intervention. It builds on an existing model for crisis development (Voskes & Widdershoven, n.d.). The model is multi applicable and gives insight into the behaviour as well as of the professional as the other and validates the complex context of crisis development. COM 2.0 uses movement characteristics (Cordaro et al., 2018; Shafir, 2016; Shafir, Tsachor, & Welch, 2016) of the face and body. A short interactive presentation and a journey to the meaning of early emotional recognition and intervention in psychiatry. It puts crisis development in perspective for law enforcement, psychiatric staff and others that regularly meet these situations. 

Drs.van Beest graduated in cultural anthropology and economy and specialized in the human voice as part of non verbal communication (intonation, tone, timbre, volume). She examined 10.000 conversations and dicovered why the factual message often does not correspond with our perception.The intuitive meaning of verbal communication: which factors determine how we interpret a voice, can you influence this and do we subconsciously rate a voice?

 Ir.R. Aiouaz is  civil engineer with a master in social psychology, labor and human relations and a bachelor's degree in economics and management. He developed the BS-Method in 2014 motivated to improve human communication through fundamental and applied research to decode non-verbal communication, which led him to the BS (bodysystemics)-method, used today in Italy, France, Spain, Russia and the Netherlands. Ir R. Aiouaz established the first Swiss Association of Non-verbal Communication to guarantee the quality in this field and teaches the method to judges, lawyers, custom-officers, in business and employees of the Swiss Gvmt.