Not all pieces of information mentioned during an interaction are equally accessible in speakers' conversational memory. The current study sought to test whether 2 basic features of dialogue management (reference acceptance and reuse) affect reference recognition. Dyads of speakers were asked to discuss a route for an imaginary person, thus…

Objective: The authors quantitatively examined differences in psychiatric residents' and attending physicians' communication profiles and voice tones. Methods: Audiotaped recordings of 49 resident-patient and 35 attending-patient medication-management appointments at four ambulatory sites were analyzed with the Roter Interaction Analysis System…

This article describes how 2 classrooms of 4-year-old children incorporated popular media (cartoons, television shows, video games, movies, and music) into their conversations with peers during writing. The findings assert that (a) children naturally incorporate popular culture into their writing, (b) children include popular culture in their…

Research in home-school communication has incorporated little, to date, about participation by English as a second language (ESL) parents. This article examines the communication processes between recent Chinese immigrant parents and Canadian teachers at secondary school Parents' Nights. Drawing from observations of three annual Parents' Nights,…

Twenty-eight senior staff members at the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) and 60 senior staff members at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) were surveyed regarding the frequency and importance of their work-related face-to-face, telephone, and written communication. Analyses of the communication networks showed…

The activities involved in coding conversation sequences and the lack of attention given to their systematic validation within the field of speech communication are discussed in this paper. The paper first reviews briefly the assumptions underlying relational coding and the implications of viewing these activities as practical accomplishments. It…

While most scholars view argument as a single conversational event, the interaction can be seen as a serial episode that occurs and recurs in everyday life. This essay presents a model of serial argument with supporting data. (PD)

Assesses the types of conversational patterns--from cross-complaining to contracting--that characterize satisfied couples; suggests theoretical models that account for their success. Proposes the hypothesis that the underlying mechanism that maintains closeness in marriages is symmetry in emotional responsiveness, which relates to whether spouses…

A review of the literature on reciprocal self-disclosure indicates that scholars have limited their investigations to one aspect of disclosure--intimacy--while recent research suggests that disclosure is a multidimensional phenomenon. A study was conducted to assess the possibility of reciprocation of intimacy, amount, and valence (positive or…

A study was conducted to identify the independent and conjoint influence of attitude similarity and initial interactions on interpersonal attraction to relative strangers. The 124 college students who were participants in the study were informed that they would be working on a project with either an attitudinally similar or dissimilar stranger…

Employed contextual analysis to examine the meaning of touches reported in daily interaction. Found 18 categories of meanings of touch such as support, appreciation, inclusion, greeting, departure, attention-getting, etc. Discusses results in terms of the nature of tactile communication, comparing results with past research. (PD)

Taped actual employment interviews at a university placement center to determine relationships between interviewer's questions, applicants' question-answer durations, and actual interview outcomes. Found--among other results--that interviewees who received second-interview offers tended to spend more total time talking in their interviews than…

Demonstrates how rhetorical criticism can be utilized to clarify the rhetorical nature of interpersonal discourse. Synthesizes the following theories to explain the nature and form of selected portions of taped and transcribed interpersonal dialog: Lloyd Bitzer's situational theory, Ernest Bormann's fantasy theme analysis, and Carroll Arnold's…

Three studies investigated the purposes of teasing and the reaction to it. The first study asked 26 college students to describe one instance when they were teased and one when they teased someone else. In addition, they were asked to explain why the teasing had occurred and why they categorized it as teasing. The second study, involving 24…

Eighteen conversations between patients and nurses or physicians were videotaped to examine patterns that the interactants followed to maintain dominant or recessive roles. Physicians/nurses were viewed as the dominant interactants because of their greater control in the hospital setting whereas patients were viewed as the recessive interactants…