Kinesics is the study of communication through body movement. This subfield is composed of topics like facial expressions, synchrony of body movements and gestures. Because most of what belongs to kinesics is nonlinguistic, researchers that are interested in cross-cultural similarities often study this area of nonverbal communication. However, cultural psychologists also are interested in kinesics regarding differences between cultures. For example, many gestures are culture-specific and originate from spoken language.
The physical body makes an impression on observers; it is thus usually the first form of communication a person employs. Research in this area tends to focus on understanding and explaining how certain aspects of the human body influence the impression the body makes on others. Some specific topics in this area are how people alter their bodies to influence the impression they give, cultural differences in interpretations of the physical body and genetic influences over body type.
Space plays a major role in nonverbal communication. Proxemics, the study of interpersonal space, is integral in understanding interpersonal relationships. Nonverbal communication researchers in this area tend to focus on how interpersonal space and distance play a role in creating and establishing relationships. Important topics in this area are territory, crowding and personal space.
Touch is one of the strongest forms of interpersonal communication. Haptics, the area of nonverbal communication that studies touch, is interlinked with the study of relationships. As a field of study, haptics covers other research topics, such as the analysis of different types of touch, touch avoidance and touch taboos.
As people interact with each other, they tend to spend the majority of the interaction focusing on the face, as opposed to other parts of the body. Oculesics addresses this fact by studying the role of the eyes in communication. The face is the most information-dense part of the body, but the eyes can inform a person of another's current conscious and unconscious state. Topics of research in this subfield are eye contact, pupil dilation, eye movements and blinking.