A study was conducted to replicate (with improvements) some early research that attempted to identify significant predictors of communication apprehension. It was hypothesized that the dimensions of homophily, attraction, and situational self-esteem would be significant predictors of situational apprehension in the acquaintance context of…

Based on the theoretical concepts and research methodology of Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, a study examined the emblems (gestures with exact verbal meanings) of Punjabi (India) immigrants in Canada. A limited repertoire of 63 emblems was elicited from nine Punjabi informants and then shown to nine Canadian citizens and one United States…

A study was conducted as part of a program to develop and test an individual level communications model. The model proposes that audience members bring to communications situations a set of learned cognitive processing strategies that produce cognitive structural representations of information in memory to facilitate the meeting of the various…

Experiences of the editors of communication journals can be drawn on for tips on how to get articles published. The editor of "Communication Quarterly" makes the final decision on whether a manuscript should be accepted, accepted with revisions, or rejected. Since revisions are requested in the vast majority of cases, authors should be…

Two studies were undertaken to determine first whether language characteristics attributed to females are more socially desirable than those attributed to males and second whether a double standard exists such that language traits seen as socially desirable for adults in general are viewed as negative when assigned to either females or males. For…

Three studies were conducted to ascertain the relationship between predisposition for group work climate and the types of procedural messages that group members employ. In the studies, expectations about group work procedures fell into two categories: high procedural order (HPO) and low procedural order (LPO). Each category consisted of four…

Research on the effectiveness of science writing can be considered in three categories: audience characteristics, effects of scientific communication, and source/receiver relations. Audience research indicates that interest in problems may vary according to proximity to the problem, demographic criteria, and level of general concern with social…

Perhaps due to misunderstandings of the nature of the research task in visual communication, findings of empirical research in that field have been highly inconsistent. Historically, there has been little serious systematic empirical investigation of visual communication. One difficulty is that it is not always possible to measure nonverbal…

Thirty male and twenty female students were used to investigate the strategies of topic management. In pairs, they were told that the male (or female) would like to become friends with the female (or male), and were assigned a dialogue which created a positive or a negative context. Then the subject assigned as the initiator was given one of three…

Three methodological improvements were incorporated into a two-channel study that tested the relationships between communication cues, dynamic/conversational delivery styles, and four dimensions of source credibility--dynamism, competence, evaluation, and trustworthiness. The methodological improvements included a molar rather than molecular…

In a previous study, subjects that heard a monaurally presented two-clause sentence immediately followed by a probe word (identical word recognition) were faster at recognizing the probe as a sentence word with their left ears than with their right ears. This result suggested that the right ear was particularly efficient at transforming…

Three hundred female college students participated in a study to determine whether viewing a prior sequence of photographs of emotional-facial expressions would influence their impressions of later expressions. Each subject was tested individually and shown one series of five separate photographs of varying facial expressions, one photograph at a…

This paper offers a plan for increasing communication effectiveness in organizational setting through a team building approach. The first section of the paper provides a scenario that places team building in an organizational development context and presents a detailed description of a team building process used to increase communication…

The first part of this essay argues specifically that legal speech acts are not statements but question/answer constructions. The focus in this section is on the underlying interrogative structure of the legal decision. The second part of the paper touches on significant topics related to the concept of legal speech acts, including the philosophic…

In a semiotic study exploring whether the visibility of both ends in a dyadic interaction affected a third party's evaluation of the interactants, subjects evaluated two versions of six simulated employment interviews. The six male applicants for employment simulated overgesticulation, lack of adequate eye contact, moderate aggressiveness, kinesic…