The Supreme Court's 1973 decision striking down restrictive abortion laws in Texas and Georgia has significantly shaped the rhetoric of the Right to Life movement in both tone and substance. This paper explores how the Court's decision has influenced the movement's definition and development of issues. In addition, it examines the verbal and…

This paper presents two research studies on the use of dogmatism as a predictor of verbal communication behavior. The studies examined the effects of dogmatism on the formulation of written and oral persuasive messages by comparing college students' scores on the Rokeach D and California F Scales with a content analysis of the written or oral…

This study investigated the relationships between teacher facilitative or directive verbal behavior in nursery school classrooms and seven aspects of child language change. Twenty-eight nursery teachers and 95 children from these classrooms were selected for this study. The teacher verbal behavior was measured by the Withall Social Climate Index,…

This study examined the effects of differential time pressures on small group members' rankings of one another based on vocal activity. Vocal activity was operationalized as observed frequency of interaction. Time pressure was manipulated by allowing either six minutes or no time limit on a group problem-solving task. Main effects were…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether certain interviewer variables affected the amount of trust present in an interview situation. The design of the experiment was based on five groups: four experimental cells and one control cell. Each experimental cell was composed of six male and six female subjects. The control cell contained 26…

This paper asks whether the imprecision and complexity of natural language, as opposed to the language of science or logic, represent flaws or essential functional properties. It is argued that ambiguity can be manipulated by the speaker through environmentally derived characteristics. A discussion follows on the study of the functions of language…

The research findings of profane language usage need to be extended so that more may be learned about human communication. In order to establish profane language usage norms, eighty-six university students were asked to estimate their profane language usage in each of three categories (excretory, religious, and sexual) in reference to three…

A study was conducted to develop and test a method for describing, in a systematic and quantifiable fashion, the nature of the interaction that takes place between a supervisor (e.g., principal or helping teacher) and a teacher. Tape recordings of 50 supervisor-teacher conferences were collected. They were analyzed by use of a 15-category…

A project was conducted to study the interrelationships of teacher and/or student classroom behavior as measured by four different observation systems employed simultaneously to assess a given teaching-learning situation. Subjects were 71 student teachers each of whom was observed for 20 minutes during the latter half of his student teaching by a…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not sensitivity training increased perceptivity in recognizing the emotional meaning of others, and thus, increase accuracy in responding to an audio tape (Davitz Tape) on which nine different emotions are expressed within the content of an emotionally neutral or content free sentence. Two…

The "Tell-And-Find Picture Game" is designed to teach both speaking and listening comprehension skills to preschool children. The game is arranged to provide a cooperative experience for two players who take turns in the role of a speaker and of a listener. In order to test the effectiveness of the game in encouraging cognitive gains, a…

This study was designed to answer two major questions: (1) whether or not operant conditioning procedures supplemented by treatments drawn from other areas of experimental psychology could produce changes in counselor interviewing behavior, and (2) how much change resulted from response specific reinforcement and how much from other factors. Three…

This study of child language acquisition concerns various structural and paralinguistic features of language and examines their role in the total language acquisition process. The informants were three children (two boys and one girl) aged five years, two months; three years, four months; and one year, nine months. Their speech was recorded over a…

Data Collection and reduction procedures used in the system for the Analysis of Classroom Communication (SACC) are presented. The SACC is a system devised for the systematic observation of verbal and non-verbal classroom behavior. Coders employ data sheets which contain numbered cells for recording behavior at five second intervals. Each sheet…

As one of four research projects conducted to increase the amount of study focused on traditional nursery school (group day care centers) and family day care centers, this paper presents and tests two hypotheses: (1) that there would be more verbalizations and more movement in the family day care center, and (2) that there would be less movement…