Proposes to establish the correct Black cultural perspective on the role and function of personal insults in sounding and the boundary between play and nonplay. Considers different cultural consequences that would stem from regarding personal insults to be part of verbal play or not, and shows similarity in the structure and function of…

The study investigated the relationship between those factors in individual supervisory conference behavior in speech-language pathology perceived to be effective and the verbal interaction/content variables of the conference, isolating the variables most important for further conference analysis and research. (Author/MC)

Research at the Chicago Institute focused on the social competence of learning disabled (LD) children, including investigation of communicative competence (e.g., adapting one's style to listeners, conversational skills), reading abilities (oral reading and comprehension), causal attributions of success and failure, and the immediate impression LD…

Describes French language game called Metropolice which provides excitement of a chase over a board map of the Paris Metro. Game provides an opportunity in which degrees of skill in asking, answering, and responding have a proving ground and creates a blend of chance and linguistic challenge. (Author/BK)

Determined the helpfulness of different counselor verbal response modes. Using Interpersonal Process Recall, clients in two samples rated the helpfulness of particular counselor responses. Interpretations received the highest helpfulness ratings from both client and counselor. Advisements were rated as slightly more helpful than nonadvisements.…

Examines socioculturally related interference phenomena by focusing on the English verbal behavior of the Japanese from a contrastive analysis approach. Discusses interactional patterns, speech acts, conversational strategies, and nonverbal behavior. (Author/BK)

Investigates preschool children's behavioral responses to linguistic cues regarding ownership of objects, examining the effects of such cues on children's physical or verbal attempts to take an object in another's possession, and on verbalization of claims of ownership. (RH)

Describes a study which investigated the abilities of four- and five- year-old children to discriminate pitch direction using one of three modes of response: verbal, gestural, or performance-based. The results showed that nonverbal, performance-based response modes are the most natural way for young children to react to pitch direction. (Author/RM)

Verbal behavior in transcripts of psychotherapy was coded according to Stile's taxonomy of verbal response modes. Therapists of different theoretical persuasions used different mixtures of verbal techniques. Common elements that make verbal interaction psychologically therapeutic lie in client behavior. (Author)

Examines the criteria which must be met for an explanation given to an elementary school student to be considered satisfactory. Types of explanations described are descriptive, prescriptive, aesthetic, and analytic. Criteria include suitability to content and the explanation's relationship with the student's previous knowledge level. (AM)

Rates of acquiescence were alarmingly high in institutions as well as community samples; lower IQ respondents tended to acquiesce more than higher IQ respondents; and, acquiescence had major effects on the content of responses. (Author)

Verbal interaction of 12 mothers and 12 fathers with their 19-month-old children in parent/infant dyads and parents/infant triads was assessed. In the triad condition, fathers spoke less and took fewer conversational turns than did mothers. (JMB)

Utilizing data from the WISC-R standardization sample, Gutkin presented formulae to calculate factorially pure verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, and freedom from distractibility deviation quotients. Data are presented concerning standard errors of measurement and score discrepancies that are required for statistical significance…

Presents data from a patient with a progressive fluent aphasia, who exhibited a severe verbal impairment but a relatively preserved access to knowledge from pictures. Argues for a distributed, multi-modality system for semantic memory in which information is stored in different brain regions and in different representational formats. (Author/VWL)