An oral screening test administered by an adult to a five-year-old child was transcribed and analyzed. The test was chosen as an example of a referential communication task that is also a social communication task. The analysis demonstrates that a participant in communication assumes that the other participants are employing strategies for…

A study was conducted to investigate the practical management of interactions sustaining close friendships. Ten pairs of close friends were interviewed individually on two occasions and together on a third occasion. An interpretive analysis of subjects' remarks identified a dialectical principle governing the communicative organization of…

Noting that interaction between patients and health care providers is a critical factor in the delivery of medical care, this paper argues that an interpersonal perspective can and should provide the paradigm for the study of medical communication. It suggests that the relationship between the sociocultural context in health care and communication…

In this study full-time adult education program administrators were interviewed and taped to determine what they did on the job, how they felt about what they did, and how they prepared or felt they should be preparing to achieve the goals they identified as essential to doing those jobs well. Transcript responses from the interviews were divided…

The aim of this conference was to consider current thinking on behavior modification and social education, and to examine ways in which the psychological and educational concepts and skills involved in these approaches could best be taught to nurses. Over 40 nurse tutors, clinical teachers, and inservice training officers attended the conference.…

Numerous investigations have been conducted to discover the personality correlates of effectiveness in counseling, especially variables concerned with the counselor's ability to function flexibly and openly in both cognitive and affective dimensions. The relationship between dogmatism and facilitative interpersonal functioning was examined by…

A three-year combined sample of 103 master's level counseling students was administered five measures of cognitive complexity, selected on the bases of previous factor analytic research and their potential relevance to counseling research. The instruments were designed to measure the processing of social stimuli, and included the Interconcept…

THE FOCUS OF THE STUDY IS UPON THE INTERNAL CHANGE AGENT IN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM. IT RESULTS FROM THE ASSUMPTION THAT IT WOULD BE VALUABLE FOR THE SYSTEM TO HAVE A ROLE PRIMARILY CONCERNED WITH THE PHENOMENA OF CHANGE. THE CHANGE AGENT IS REFERRED TO AS A TRAINER ROLE, SINCE TRAINED BEHAVIOR OF INDIVIDUALS CAN INCREASE THE POTENTIAL FOR PLANNED,…

A review of communication research was conducted to (1) describe and clarify the nature of empathy, (2) investigate the construct of assertiveness, (3) posit a possible relationship between empathy and assertiveness, and (4) provide possible suggestions for future research. The literature indicates that conceptualizations of empathy primarily…

The theoretical and research literature on women in treatment has increased over the past two decades as a result of the growing concern about the appropriateness and adequacy of mental-health services for women. This annotated bibliography, in six sections, is a response to the need to survey, organize, and abstract this new body of literature.…

The relationship between understanding and rhetorical sensitivity was studied in the context of dating relationships. The hypothesis was that rhetorically sensitive persons would understand their dating partners better than persons who were not rhetorically sensitive. Subjects for the study were 34 dating couples in which one of the partners was…

This study was designed as a partial replication and extension of the research on interpersonal problem solving in preschool children by Shure and Spivack. Fifteen well-adjusted and 14 impulsive children from Head Start Centers were administered the Preschool Interpersonal Problem Solving test (PIPS) under either incentive or no incentive…

Twenty first-year medical students were randomly assigned to one of four short-term empathy training groups (discussion, modeling, experiential-simulation and control). Empathy skills were assessed immediately after and four weeks after training sessions. Although results were not statistically significant, the trends were in the predicted…

Recent theories of depression that have attracted enthusiasm are those of Lewinsohn and Seligman. Lewinsohn's theory emphasizes the importance of deficits in social skill leading to reduced reinforcement, while Seligman's emphasizes the evolution of the depressive's belief that his responding and reinforcement are independent. The present study…

An innovative program at the University of Washington Epilepsy Center which employes group social skills training procedures to ameliorate the psychosocial problems of chronic seizure-disorder patients is described. The rationale for the program is presented through a brief social learning analysis of the effects of long-standing periodic lack of…