Feedback is an important skill that people need to learn in life. Feedback is crucial in a public speaking class to improve speaking skills. Providing and receiving feedback is what champions feed on to be successful, thus feedback is called the "Breakfast of Champions." Feedback builds speakers' confidence. Providing in-depth feedback…

Peer feedback by students, both positive and negative, has proven to be helpful to many public speaking educators. Asking students to design their own evaluation sheets can not only guarantee the numbers of evaluations they receive, but also assist them to do more audience analysis during the preparation process for their speeches. In designing…

The Sixth Annual Children and the Media Conference, hosted by Children Now, focused on the media's role and potential influence on boys. This report highlights the thinking of participating advocates, academics, entertainment industry leaders, and children. Following excerpts from a keynote address by William Pollack of Harvard Medical School, the…

This report discusses research commissioned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in order to evaluate prototypes of digital public television programming. There were two phases of research, the first using exclusively linear demonstrations of interactive public television, and the second demonstrating computer simulations of three digital…

Oprah Winfrey is one of the wealthiest and most powerful entertainers operating in the media today. More than mere celebrity, however, she represents the notion of the heroic for her fans. In a sense, she operates as a television evangelist offering advice on secular issues of the day. This paper explores Oprah's role in influencing audiences to…

Introduces a theoretical perspective on media viewing choices, grounded in social identity theory. Content analysis demonstrates that child, younger adult, and older adult television viewers show a preference for viewing characters of their own age. The experiment demonstrates that young adults' preference for viewing young adult characters exists…

Examines the influence of happy outcome information and coping style on fourth and fifth graders' emotional responses to a frightening film sequence. Finds that prior knowledge of the happy outcome reduced self-reported fear and worry for "blunters" but not for "monitors." Discusses interpretations of findings and implications for understanding…

Investigates children's dramatic literacy and explores new testing methods. Supports the critical importance of dramatic actions for young audience's comprehension. Finds that over half the subjects recalled the linear, cause-and-effect, central actions in this "absurdist" plot, particularly when playing with analogous props. (SR)

Examines the effects of sex and violence in rock music videos on viewers to determine the appeal of and emotional responses to the videos. Finds that videos containing the highest level of sex were judged most appealing and resulted in more positive moods. Finds also that viewers did not enjoy violent videos. (KEH)

Proposes and analyzes Video Audience Simulation Technique (VAST), an electronic instructional aid related to video robotics, used to simulate audiences for public speakers, providing realistic speech rehearsal, instructor control of audience feedback to facilitate learning, and portrayal of specialized audiences unavailable in normal instructional…

Reviews multichannel learning research to find the best ways to combine audio and video in television to improve learning, and summarizes the research findings into principles for instructional television production. Highlights include the effects of redundancy on learning and on audience attention, message clarity, and problems in instructional…

Listening is an important part of presenting. An optimum learning environment is one in which individuals participate fully without pretense in the presentation experience. The article explores why listening is so important, offers tips for the best ways to listen to audience members, and examines how not to listen. (SM)

Develops and tests hypotheses concerning the relationship of different media to psychological outcomes; postulates that print media are related to analytic cognition (reason) and electronic media to syncretic cognition (emotion). Two hundred forty magazine and television advertisements are analyzed in terms of attributes and reactions they invoke.…

Discusses the issues of intimacy in the classroom within the context of the experiences of female writing students at Radcliffe College around the turn of the century. Asserts that students need options and the space to examine and move through their own fears. (PRA)

This investigation compared 19 adolescents' perceptions of the nonspeech personality characteristics of voice-disordered and normal-speaking children. Listeners, who rated recorded speech samples, showed a significant tendency to judge the normal speakers more positively than the voice-disordered speakers. Results suggest developmental trends in…