Classroom communication between deaf students was modeled using a question-and-answer game. Participants consisted of student pairs that relied on spoken language, pairs that relied on American Sign Language (ASL), and mixed pairs in which one student used spoken language and one signed. Although the task encouraged students to request…

Previous laboratory research has found that self-disclosure by a speaker identified as a political officeholder results in a decrease in persuasiveness, whereas similar disclosure by nonofficials increases persuasiveness. Two experiments were conducted to examine this effect further. In experiment 1, subjects were 75 male and 77 female…

Much has been said and written about the "conflict" between professional research and teaching. The claim is often made that the two fields of endeavor should complement each other since research can enliven and update a professor's teaching. Little attention has been directed to the converse, the possibility that a professor's teaching…

Virtually everyone involved with forensics has, at one time or another, seen or heard references to debate teams or squads as "groups." Many questions concerning the label "group," however, exist. A brief examination of definitions of the term group by scholars in the field of small group communication confirms that T. M.…

A study focused on the administrative training and leadership practices used by communication chairpersons. Of particular interest is the comparison of leadership practices of male and female chairpersons and how those practices are influenced by the length of term as chair, the size of the institution, the size of the department, whether or not…

Noting that corporations and academic institutions are struggling with issues of balance between system security and freedom of speech, this paper reviews current literature concerning privacy in computer-mediated communication (CMC) from the perspectives of both the individual user and the system administration. Focusing on the communicative…

A study explored the extent to which students' learning was facilitated by the use of computerized multimedia presentations in a large lecture course. Subjects, 168 students at a midsize eastern university who enrolled in an introductory mass communication course that used computer assisted media presentations, completed questionnaires about their…

On a daily basis, American television and radio audiences are subjected to a stream of broadcast Public Service Announcements (PSAs), each promoting "some kind of social or economic action deemed beneficial" (Stridsberg, 1977). Often, these announcements employ humor as a presentational device to help stimulate the behavioral change…

Although research exists which links gender to classroom participation, the connection between ethnicity and classroom participation has been minimally studied. Evidence suggests that ethnicity is a factor in whether a student feels comfortable asking teachers to explain information. Cooperative learning has been used successfully to attack the…

This paper seeks to integrate some ideas from family systems theory and attachment theory within a theory of public opinion and social movement. Citing the classic "The Authoritarian Personality," the paper states that the first authorities children know, their parents or other caregivers, shape children's attitudes toward all…

A study focused on investigating perceptions of sexist humor, specifically on how people perceive others' reactions to sexist humor. Subjects, 206 college men and women, rated communication competence and attraction of actors in vignettes depicting 2 different reactions to sexist humor. Results indicated that sex of both the joke teller and the…

A study on basic speech assessment replicated an earlier one except that in place of the CCAI and the Competent Speaker form, the Self-Perceived Public Speaking Competency Scale (SPPSC) was used. Also, 2 randomly selected control groups of students were added to the research design: one consisting of 62 students who had not taken speech and were…

How educators, especially those in the field of literacy, view and make use of email and its text-based features has been the subject of research. Journal articles addressing what educators and researchers know about email and how they work with email communication were reviewed. Email has moved from a limited group of users to the masses.…

A study determined the relationships among interpersonal communication competence, communicative flexibility, and rhetorical sensitivity and whether there are difference among gender groups, age groups, and class groups in rating these dependent measures. Subjects, 78 students enrolled in one of 4 sections of an upper-division undergraduate…

Viewed through an investigation of the cultural and social impact of Information Technology (IT), this paper attempts to illustrate the theoretical and practical utility of HCI (Human Computer Interaction) to communication research. Informed by the full integration hypothesis, which suggests that information technologies have become part of the…