An investigation of turn-taking during conversations between speech-handicapped adults with cerebral palsy and normally speaking adults found that interactants used available behaviors to signal turn exchanges and that most control rested with the normal speaker. Handicapped speakers were frequently unsuccessful at interaction management and in…

A competence paradigm may provide communication scholars with a theoretical framework for the study of interpersonal communication. The study of ritualistic behavior is a study of competence in its most basic form. Turn-taking in conversations--an example of ritualistic behavior--not only helps us apportion the floor, but also serves a symbolic…

Discusses a study designed to investigate the substructure of everyday social conversation which allows for judgments of competent communicative behavior or "communicative competence". Descriptions of perceived communicative competence characteristics are provided. (MH)

Concludes that in the laboratory, participants' conversation behavior is not discernably affected by videotaping, no matter how overt or obvious the taping procedure is. Study focuses on behaviors out of conscious awareness: gestures, head nods, speaking turns, self or object manipulations, and shifts to reclining posture or to forward lean. (PD)

A study was conducted to examine self-disclosure as a relational control strategy in speech communication. Conversations of seven married couples were coded using L. E. Rogers-Millar's Relational Communication Control Coding Scheme and a self-disclosure coding system developed for the study. A message-by-message comparison of the codes from the…

Five components of communication competence have been derived from research: affiliation/support, empathy, behavioral flexibility, social relaxation, and interaction management. This paper describes these dimensions of communication competence; it then reports on a study in which two college females judged by their peers to be effective…