This study attempts to determine if general principles of effective communication may be defined, if certain principles may be seen as central to the judgment of an individual's effectiveness, and if such principles of effective communication can affect perceptions of effective and ineffective communicators. Respondents to a 60-item questionnaire…

This investigation, based on the phenomenological philosophy of Alfred Schutz, was an attempt to determine how people view films by determining the meaning that the action has for them. Twenty college freshmen and sophomores and two seniors viewed the film "Tilt," a production of the National Film Board of Canada. All subjects were asked…

A cognitive-style map was prepared for each of seven instructors and 125 college students drawn from those enrolled in a course in interpersonal communications. Students were partitioned into low-match, moderate-match, and high-match subgroups, on the basis of the degree of cognitive match with their instructors, before completing a communicaton…

Forty-eight pairs of children between the ages of 4 and 8 were the subjects of this study of the development of referential communication skills and the use of technology to structure interactions between people. A communication game device was used to present children with sets of four referents on separate screens. The referents were either…

This study investigated the psychophysiological reactions of male and female subjects to cinematic elements: varying camera distances, panning shots, tracking shots, and zooming shots. Fourteen males and 15 females, members of an introductory speech course at Northern Illinois University, viewed five films that varied only in the presence or…

This ecological study is one part of a broad research effort to understand the backgrounds and characteristics of culturally disadvantaged children. The study attempted to provide empirical data which could be used to describe differences in home environments and behavior of three young children from deprived and non-deprived homes. Focus was on…

This study, presented in three parts, investigated the effects of a group of single-concept instructional variables on the learning at an advanced level of attainment of taxonomy of behavior management concepts. The effects of presenting advance organizers and inserting within-text questions was also examined. The influence of the single-concept…

This study investigates the effects of teaching decision-making skills on the classroom behavior of middle school problem students. Small groups of students met for 15 weeks with a counselor who adapted the "Deciding" program (College Entrance Examination Board) as the decision-making paradigm. Coppersmith's Self-Esteem Index and…

In this study, Hull's Drive Theory was applied to a test of the effects of general anxiety and situational stress upon speakers' lexical diversity, speaking rate, speaking time, and evaluations made of the speakers' ability. Recordings of speeches made by 122 individuals were rated by three judges on scales measuring central idea and analysis,…

This study examined factors that affect individual judgments of violent behavior portrayed on television. Study subjects included twenty "average" adolescents (control group) and twenty adolescents with a history of in-school social adjustment problems (experimental, or "adjustment," group). All the sujects were evaluated for self-esteem,…

The effect of physical mobility on news consumption and on preference for a particular news medium for different geographic news was investigated in this study. A survey of 652 residents of Lansing, Michigan, linked levels of mass media news usage to the extent of residential mobility and to national and foreign traveling indexes. Demographic…

The purpose of this study was to develop an empirical framework to help conceptualize the process and outcome of negotiation. Specifically, the hypothesis tested was that prenegotiation expectations, the use of power strategies, and individual personality traits will, in combination, predict the outcome of negotiation proceedings. A test of the…

In order to develop a prevention-oriented, communication-skill training program for couples, this study used a social-learning paradigm to increase positive messages, to decrease negative messages, and to enhance problem-solving abilities. The small group provided the context for training. Communication effectiveness and marital satisfaction were…

Counseling needs of women enrolled at a university after an interruption in their formal educational training are explored. The target population was women who were at least 24 years old and who had not attended an educational institution for two years prior to enrolling in the university. A stratefied sample (N=20) was chosen from a computer…

This study investigated whether candidate images could be designated as primarily either stimulus- or perceiver-determined and if a multiple regression model could be constructed to predict candidate image ratings from pre-stimulus perceptions of the candidate's party and post-stimulus ratings of the advertisement. One hundred twenty subjects were…