Purpose: This study examined how repeated presentations of lexically difficult words within a background noise affect a listener's ability to understand both trained (lexically difficult) and untrained (lexically easy) words in isolation and within sentences. Method: In the 1st experiment, 9 young listeners with normal hearing completed a…

Noting that communication scholars have devoted considerable attention to communication apprehension, this 27-item annotated bibliography, however, focuses on receiver-based anxiety or communication apprehension. The journal articles, conference papers, and theses listed were published between 1975 and 1988. Sections of the annotated bibliography…

A study examined the development of the Listening Practices Feedback Report (LPFR). Subjects, 189 individuals from 17 companies, completed a questionnaire in which they listed the names of associates who were good or poor listeners and listed five criteria used to determine their selections. These criteria were used to generate items for the LPFR.…

Although psychologists, sociologists, family scientists and communication experts are making important contributions to the study of personal relationships, discussion of the gender differences that often create barriers to intimacy, and how these differences are reflected in the communication process, is notably absent from much of this work.…

Notes recent research in attention and suggests ways of teaching basic listening strategies. (MH)

Listening skills are enormously important both in and of themselves and as correlates with reading comprehension. Storytelling is a very productive approach for encouraging listening skills. Perhaps the focal point relative to promoting listening competencies rests with generating appropriate attitudes among listeners. Directions for listening to…

A study examined skills related to an individual's satisfaction with a partner's listening ability. Forty-nine undergraduates in a listening skills class were asked to increase the use of effective listening behaviors with three to five individuals with whom they had a relationship--this resulted in 194 participants in the study. Two…

A study was conducted to examine the various mental processes that occur during listening. Fifteen volunteers at an eastern United States college listened to a 14-minute taped lecture. The participants pressed a button, connected to a light hidden from their view, each time their minds wandered from the specifics of the lecture. They were then…

Helping elementary school children learn to listen requires a program with listening objectives well defined and listening experiences designed to fill these objectives. This booklet contains a variety of practice exercises for teachers to use in helping their students learn to listen and explains how teachers can devise additional exercises to…

This descriptive study was conducted to evaluate the need for critical reading-listening instruction in the second and third grades. The subjects were 203 second and third graders from two northwest Florida elementary schools. The subjects were tested in groups of 10 to 15 students with critical listening ability being evaluated by using a…

Sources of individual differences in the listening comprehension of speech presented at different rates were investigated by factor analyzing 11 variables, including measures of comprehension and field-independency. Twenty-two different tests, two for each variable, were administered to 50 college students. It was concluded that: (a) the cloze…

Since listening plays such a large role in communication and learning, audio tapes can function in an important fashion in the design and delivery of instruction. In addition, recent research indicates that compressed audio tapes, in which speech is edited electronically by a sampling method so that the words-per-minute rate is increased without…

Public speaking texts urge speakers to organize their message in order to increase their audience's comprehension of it. Tests were run to determine if listeners understand better when three message organization variables are employed in a speech: explicit statement of the central idea, explicit statement of the main points, and transitions before…

Using 64 fourth- and fifth-grade girls and boys as experimentals, a study was made of whether time-compressed speech, within the limits of 160-367 words-per-minute rates, is feasible as an adequate avenue for learning certain types of material when the subjects have been provided with extended, systematic training in its use through gradual…

Reports a study designed to determine whether instruction via compressed speech produces anxiety in listeners and concludes that anxiety increases as presentation rate increases. (MH)