Studies of interaction in speaking assessment have highlighted problems regarding the unequal distribution of interaction patterns in interviews versus paired formats (Van Lier, 1989; Young & He, 1998). These studies, however, only looked at verbal interaction features, and no attempts in these studies were made to investigate both verbal and…

This paper describes how early childhood teachers' incorporation of pauses raises the quality of talk-in-interaction during play-based mathematics activities. Responses of both children and teachers are shown to be more contingent and expansive when conversations include protracted pauses than during interactions in which pauses are largely…

A theory of group interaction with a focus on the trajectories of relevant variables as they change over time is developed in this paper. The four major components of the group interaction process (communication, conflict, involvement, and centralization) are presented and conceptually defined, and the nature of their interdependence is discussed.…

The activities involved in coding conversation sequences and the lack of attention given to their systematic validation within the field of speech communication are discussed in this paper. The paper first reviews briefly the assumptions underlying relational coding and the implications of viewing these activities as practical accomplishments. It…

A model that depicts communication as a dynamic ongoing phenomenon is presented in this paper. The key elements of the described model are: environmental factors, actor/auditor, image, perception, messages, channels, intrapersonal feedback, and consensus of meaning. An axiomatic basis is provided for each variable to serve as rules of…

This paper proposes a general principle of topic resources as a key principle of conversation. The first section of the paper offers a discussion of the notion of cohesion as a condition in which interactants perceive that their utterances are related to one another and presents the "given-new" strategy (in which the interactants…

A study was conducted to identify the independent and conjoint influence of attitude similarity and initial interactions on interpersonal attraction to relative strangers. The 124 college students who were participants in the study were informed that they would be working on a project with either an attitudinally similar or dissimilar stranger…

In an attempt to better understand the quality of interprofessional relationships, research used a confirmation/disconfirmation framework to analyze communication in nurse-physician dyads. Results indicated that nurses and physicians were primarily confirming in their interaction. (SRT)

This article discusses three characteristics useful in defining the relations between speakers in the turn-taking aspects of conversation: the derivational history of personal relationships, stop-action pseudo-history versus dynamic compacted posing, and the criss-crossing of verbal versus kinetic axes. (Available from Semiotica, Co-Libri, P.O.…

Research was conducted to study the speech in a sales transaction in a retail store under natural conditions. Fourteen sales transactions in a lighting fixture store were tape recorded, with the customer's knowledge, over a period of four days. Each talk was divided into three segments--speech preparatory, speech central, and speech final--and…

Presents a conceptual and operational definition of one cognitive dimension of communicative competence--interaction involvement--based on Goffman's model of face-to-face society. Reports two studies to support the validity of the definition. Outlines the implications for future research on communicative competence as well as instructional…

Argues that not only is the study of interaction in second language acquisition (SLA) predicated on a socially impoverished view of interaction, but also that the types of data frequently used for investigating questions of interaction in a second language may not be adequate for determining what really occurs in such interactions. (15 references)…

To identify conditions that make a conversational interaction constructive--in the sense that the participants can find the way toward the success of what they wanted to accomplish--two situations were examined. In one, a professional researcher explained her data to a statistician. In the other, three groups of two people cooperated with each…

Effects of sex of speaker and sex of dyad partner on selected linguistic variables were examined in four-minute segments of 20 conversations between previously unacquainted college students. Five male dyads, five female dyads, and ten mixed dyads were studied. Three significant interaction effects were found. Males and females produced about the…

Intended for those who teach dyadic communication, this paper argues that each partner in an intimate relationship has two primary communication needs: (1) to listen, look at, and pay attention to the "self" in order to attain clear awareness as a source of information for self-disclosure; and (2) to listen, look at, and pay attention to…