This paper, one in a series investigating day care services, is based on two assumptions concerning verbalizations of preschool children: (1) the complexity of verbalizations is more important than the quantity; and (2) the quality of care is directly related to the occurrence of the complexity of verbalizations. The higher the occurrence of…

This paper analyzes verbal interactions between teachers and students to determine the speaking and listening skills which a teacher must possess. A simple model of classroom verbal interaction presents four possibilities: a) teacher-initiated conversation, b) pupil-initiated conversation, c) teacher response to pupil, and d) pupil response to…

This study examines the development of communication and social inference in terms of the child's immediate social environment, the child's role systems, and the standards of interpersonal relationships. Middle-class mothers and fathers of first, third, and fifth graders were asked what they say to their children in several common situations in…

The rapid growth in the field of interpersonal communication is reflected in both the introduction of courses dealing with the personalized involvement of people with each other and the prolific output of related educational resources. Specific representative samples of current resource selections include four texts dealing solely with…

Forty-eight pairs of children between the ages of 4 and 8 were the subjects of this study of the development of referential communication skills and the use of technology to structure interactions between people. A communication game device was used to present children with sets of four referents on separate screens. The referents were either…

Thirty-two educable mentally retarded (EMR) and 32 nonretarded adolescent Ss were administered an association task and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test to determine aspects of verbal deficit, often the basis for placement of EMR students in special classes. The association task required an S to give up to 25 associations for each of 10 verbal…

The principles and practices of general semantics can be taught to college classes within the context of quality science fiction writings. The works of A. E. van Vogt and Robert Heinlein are particularly useful in exemplifying the details of general semantics. These works and some other science fiction are based upon the Korzybskian principles of…

Reported is a study designed to determine whether changes in verbal interaction patterns would be demonstrated in classrooms of teachers who received observation training and used it, using a structured checklist of classroom interaction. Twenty-six teachers, from different grade levels, were divided evenly into Experimental (E) and Control (C)…

This issue of the Reading Aids Series presents a discussion of the potential for critical reading among young children and how it can be developed. It offers suggestions for the maximum development of thinking skills and attitudes of inquiry and evaluation. Some of the topics discussed are: (1) the development of percepts, concepts, and common…

The purpose of this study was to establish answers to the following questions: (1) Does a cross-age teaching program provide a situation in which school children can extend their role repertories by enacting the role of the tutor to younger children? (2) Can the language used by children in the role of tutor be classified under categories derived…

This study examined whether or not first- and third-grade pupils could verbally communicate a task as effectively as the experimenter and whether or not pupils and teacher aides could listen as well as certified teachers. One hundred and twenty first- and third-grade pupils, teachers, and teacher aides from a predominantly black, inner-city school…

This paper describes a study which was carried out to examine the intra-group verbal behavior of "person-oriented" and "non-person-oriented" individuals. Extrapolating from conceptual systems theory, it was expected that the "person-oriented" (conceptually abstract) individuals would deal with different referents,…

This study was designed to learn more about relationships between sex and the expressive and comprehensive language development of the kindergarten child. Thirty-four kindergarten children (17 males and 17 females) were given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and the Vocabulary Subtest of the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children…

The author reports a recent study on humorous and non-humorous speeches on two topics: the meaning of totalitarianism and an explanation of the Whorf hypothesis. Student subjects listened to two recorded speeches--the humorous version of one speech and the non-humorous version of the other speech--and later responded to a multiple-choice test of…

A study was conducted concerning: (1) the manner in which neighborhoods, social cliques and church groups structure interpersonal communication of information about farming in two agricultural Missouri communities--Prairie, economically stable, and Ozark, undergoing rapid change; and (2) how this changed between 1956 and 1966. Interviews were…