Provides tentative support for Carter's postulates that a person stops all other activities to engage in the cognitive behaviors generally labeled as "thinking," that is, those behaviors requiring interpersonal or intrapersonal communication. (RB)

Indicates through regression analyses that (1) the Ziller, Martell, and Morrison self-differentiation measure and (2) Crockett's Role Category Questionnaire are significantly related and significant predictors of the criterion variables. Found Bieri et al.'s measure to be virtually unrelated to any of the study variables. (JD)

Responds to Robert Entman's call for the establishment of a paradigm of news framing research. Describes a research program which includes three paradigmatic outlooks, called cognitive, constructivist, and critical. Argues that the research program has benefited the communication discipline by encouraging researchers to use specific theories to…

Responds to an article in the same issue regarding research methods for conversational cognition. Reviews goals and methods of cognitive science, provides a model of conversation that contrasts the interests of cognitive science and communication, summarizes research on conversation that serves both fields, and contrasts that with the research…

Uses dual-process theories and research concerned with automaticity and the role conceptual short-term memory plays in visual information processing to illustrate both the ubiquity of nonstrategic information acquisition during interpersonal communication and its potential consequences on judgments and behavior. Discusses theoretical and…

Responds to an article in the same issue regarding research methods for conversational cognition. Argues for a noncognitive view of rational models in communication research. Sets out an analysis of the kinds of claims made by rational models of message design. Discusses the implications of this analysis for studies of the cognitive processes…

Replies to the previous article's review of arguments against the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). Considers the effects-of-evidence-on-attitudes argument unconvincing and explains why. (NKA)

Addresses the major errors and misconceptions perpetuated by Stiff and Boster's response to criticism of Stiff's 1986 article. Focuses on the major conceptual and methodological issues of Stiff's model. (NKA)

Suggests that claims about cognition can be made at four levels--biological, implementation, algorithmic, and rational--but that theoretical claims about conversational cognition can most usefully be pursued at the rational and algorithmic levels. Proposes criteria and reviews promising methods for studying conversational cognition, in an effort…

Given that overt linguistic behavior is not an adequate or primary datum for linguistic theory and that linguistic theory cannot directly account for overt linguistic behavior, human language can be seen as an abstract system that relates (graphic or phonetic) surface representations of sentences and underlying grammatical forms and semantic…

Describes Social Representation Theory (SRT), an important and controversial development in European social constructivism. Argues that, although SRT and Dynamic Social Impact Theory (DSIT) come from different research traditions, they are complementary. Maintains that DSIT goes further in providing a clear mechanism for how dialog creates…

Because cognition is inherently inaccessible to observers, researchers interested in cognitive approaches to argumentation frequently rely on self-reports for data. Opponents to self-reports argue that such data have very limited value. They claim that when subjects are put in a position where they have to tell more than they can know, they…

A study was conducted as part of a program to develop and test an individual level communications model. The model proposes that audience members bring to communications situations a set of learned cognitive processing strategies that produce cognitive structural representations of information in memory to facilitate the meeting of the various…

Proposes two theories which constitute an interactive and dynamical system from which public opinion may emerge and become organized: (1) a dynamic theory of cognitive impact specifying processes for resolving inconsistency within an individual's attitudinal structure; and (2) a cognitive-social theory of the structural organization of attitudes…

Shows how Dynamic Social Impact Theory (DSIT) and an evolutionary perspective offer new ways of understanding social representations through communication. Outlines the metatheoretical perspective that social representations emerge as structure in self-organizing systems. Explores ways in which DSIT might be further informed by the dynamic…