A total of 20 five-year-old children were observed in two different preschools to examine conciliatory and subordinate behaviors following conflicts and to determine these behaviors' relationship to subsequent interaction (i.e., separation or peaceful association). Discusses the importance of conciliatory gestures in resolving social tension. (CB)

Analyzes argumentative talk as a sociable function among some ethnic groups. Even though speakers repeatedly disagree, remain nonaligned with each other, and compete for interactional goods, they do so in a nonserious way, and in ways which actually display their solidarity and protect their intimacy. The cultural relativity of norms of evaluation…

Identified three client typologies (vocational-educational, physical-environmental coping, and personal-social) based on the expressed concerns of 217 rehabilitation clients. The typologies were found to differentiate the interpersonal styles of 45 counselors in terms of their use of counseling interview subrole behaviors and levels of…

This article highlights several factors that contribute to the complexity of tasks facing teachers and students as they interact to construct everyday classroom teaching-learning events. Also explored are ways in which expectations are signaled verbally or nonverbally and consequences that follow students' attempts to read teachers' cues. (CB)

A group of young children were studied to investigate their ability to sense expressive qualities in art and to respond to verbal clues which describe these qualities. Results are presented. (DF)

Social play emerged earlier than social pretend play with a similar structure; the incidence of social pretend play increased with age. Four strategies for integrating pretense into social play were isolated; among them, verbal recruitment and "join" were found to be more effective than imitation or nonverbal recruitment. (Author/RH)

Reports on a study indicating children's dependency in oral persuasion on the cooperative nature of dialog and nonverbal vocalizations and their dependence in written persuasion on persuasive strategies found in speech that can be transferred to writing and, concomitantly, their relatively infrequent use of persuasive strategies specific to…

Discusses errors in the serial transmission of information faced by managers and scholars who rely on secondary instead of primary sources. Presents a humorous case study as an illustration, then describes how distortions resulting from the serial transmission of information result from the following systematic processes: condensation, closure,…

An interactional analysis of reading activities of 48 third grade Chicano students with limited English proficiency showed that Ss, on the whole, used language effectively to obtain responses in their reading groups, their requests were directly and clearly stated, interpreted sincerely, and concerned the teaching and learning task. (CL)

Contrasts several conceptualizations about the interdependency of three empathy responses in kindergarten children: cognitive (understanding), affective (sharing), and facial empathy (facially expressing another's affect). Results corroborated a conceptualization in which affective and facial empathy were mediated by cognitive empathy. (Author/RH)

Investigates the relationship between five- and seven-year-old children's communicative performance and their level of understanding about message ambiguity and communication failure. Level of understanding about communication was assessed by asking the child to ascribe blame for communication failure following an ambiguous message and to judge…

Reported on the development of a behavior rating scale for doctor-patient interactions. Results revealed that raters can reliably and accurately discriminate between medical and personal aspects of both speech and touch using written transcripts and audiovisual tapes of doctor-patient interactions. (JAC)

Findings suggest that (1) the effects of rehearsal on deceptive success vary depending upon certain characteristics of the communicator/deceiver and (2) a relationship exists between certain behavior correlates of deceptive communication and observer accuracy in detecting deception. (PD)

Tests were administered to obtain comparative data on the contentive verbal language of three-, four-, and five-year-old black children. (GW)