A study surveyed 972 college students for their preferences in classroom arrangement (tradition straight-row, horseshoe, and modular) and their seating preferences within each style. Results indicated that students' arrangement preferences are influenced by both attractiveness of the course and the individual student's communication apprehension…

In order to test whether constant eye contact, formal posture, and varied vocal inflection increase source credibility and listener comprehension, 144 college students in an introductory speech communication course were placed in groups of equal size that listened to the same informative speech. The speaker presented to each group a different…

This booklet is a collection of abstracts, literature reviews, and reports on experiments in the communication field. Ninety abstracts from speech communication literature (1970-1977) are presented under the following categories: communication theory, research methodology, interpersonal communication, rhetorical theory and criticism, persuasion,…

A study examined the effects of gender on academic achievement in speech communication courses. In order to test the research hypothesis that females would receive higher grades than males, 2,190 grades given by 74 speech communication teachers over a five-year period were examined. The analysis of variance placed gender of the instructor, gender…

A study was conducted (1) to determine the effectiveness of a specially designed one-semester basic speech course on the self-image of college students experiencing extreme communication anxiety, and (2) to discover whether a difference existed between the self-image of students who had an external locus of control and those with an internal locus…

A study was conducted to examine speech interruption patterns as an index of communication dominance and gender differences in language behavior. Six graduate student groups involving a total of 35 subjects were videotaped. The data extracted for study were 255 transcribed interruption sequences. A category system was developed and used to code…

Experiments at three community colleges were conducted to examine the relationships among anxiety, performance, and two different methods of informing students of their instructor's evaluation of in-class speeches. Subjects were 77 students in six speech classes. The three teachers of the classes gave traditional letter grades and comments on the…

The educational effects of pronutritional programing on kindergarten children were investigated in a pretest-posttest control group design involving 56 children from four kindergarten classes. These children were exposed to a series of five 20-minute videotapes over a period of six class days. The videotapes were compiled from popular children's…

This bibliographic pathfinder to Northern Illinois University Library's holdings in the field of speech communication lists resources under the following divisions: basic guides; selected bibliographies; yearbooks, handbooks, and directories; government publications; scholarly journals; professional and trade journals; periodical directories;…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: (1) identifying problem formation behaviors within the process of organizational change; (2) using the communication audit to determine decision style, satisfaction, and communication…

In a study conducted to obtain information on the corporate exit interview, the personnel directors of 500 major American corporations were asked to indicate the purposes and goals of the interviews, their degree of formality, and their content. In addition, the respondents were asked to assess their interviewing system and describe the nature of…

Four coorientation variables--congruency, accuracy, agreement, and feelings of being understood--were examined after each of 15 meetings of a discussion group composed of 12 graduate students in education. It was hypothesized that group members' accuracy and agreement regarding salient group issues would increase over time, and that congruency and…

Employee selection and appraisal criteria were examined in 44 organizations to (1) test a new data gathering instrument, (2) determine the extent to which student interviewers and organizational interviewees had similar perceptions of the importance of the selection and appraisal criteria used in that organization, and (3) continue and expand an…

A study was designed to examine an underlying assumption regarding the use of the semantic differential in measuring the credibility and homophily of a communicator, namely, that responses to an ideal source position themselves at one extreme end of the scale, reflecting the monotonic function of the instrument such that the highest response…

The argument for renewed theoretical development in the study of family communication has several implications. One is that researchers should concentrate on family communication as such rather than expanding generalizations from family communication to other groups and institutions; this requires grappling more specifically with the explication…