Reports reversals of audience attitudes toward speakers following exposure to tape recordings of their opening remarks. (SW)

Brief report of pilot study, indicating that relationships between forms of expression and social adjustment depend on criteria for adjustment. Results suggest continued explanation of relationship with more systematic criteria variation, and with larger subject samples. (Author)

Reveals that a speaker's "dynamism alone is not apt to change a listener's attitudes toward his subject, though a dynamic presentation does operate "as an additive component of credibility." (Author/RD)

Discusses the diminishing importance of words in contemporary society. (SW)

Three experiments were conducted in order to investigate the developmental relationship between children's and adults' use of pointing and verbal descriptions as devices for reference. (Author/MP)

The Levels of Verbal Intimacy Technique (LOVIT) was developed as an observational system to document verbal interaction in groups. Although rating-scale data produced information confirming order and interval spacing of six categories derived from theoretical assumptions about developmental processes in T-groups, more investigation is needed about…

Suggests an integrated program for helping children understand some science phenomena. An important part of this program is the relationship between the pupils' learning and the language they use to do it. Suggests that making appropriate links between affect and cognition can enhance learning. (NRJ)

Applies a variety of factor analytic approaches to data obtained from the Structured Pediatric Psychosocial Interview (SPPI), an instrument designed to gain information about children's social background and the process by which they relate affective distress. Subjects were independent samples of 500, 400, 519 and 1,000 pediatric patients and…

Presents guidelines for organization of conversation groups and suggests conversational activities for first year of language study including directed dialogs, use of questions, telephone vocabulary, and restaurant activities. Emphasizes importance of teacher supervision of, rather than participation in, conversational activities. (Author/BK)

Questions Piaget's theory that young children's speech is primarily egocentric. Suggests their speech can be highly socialized or sociocentric as early as age two. Examines the relationship between egocentric and sociocentric speech within the context of the social theory of language acquisition and provides conclusions and implications for the…

Families (N=20) participated in a Plan Something Together task used to measure three dimensions of family individuation: self-assertion, validation, and permeability. Discusses results in the context of several methodological challenges encountered in analyses of family interaction; discusses general strategies for responding to these challenges.…

Formal, highly technical, and often unintelligible language is used by some professions, notably in law. Because of pressure from consumers, a trend away from this type of writing is emerging. (JOW)

Questionnaire and interview data from men and women (N=138) divorced in their middle years found a frequent lack of communication rather than conflict existed and little time spent together in pleasurable activities. The marriage was not examined until a crisis occurred during the middle years. (Author/RC)

Results showed that experimentally produced variations in the person orientation of three nine-year-old female confederates affected the socialization techniques employed by 24 female college students who were attempting to elicit altruistic behavior from the children. (JMB)