We report a study that uses retrospective analysis to understand the relationships between American and Chinese participants' utterances during a conversation and the moment-by-moment feelings and reactions they subsequently described. Intercultural and intracultural pairs of Chinese and American participants talked about a fictional crime story…

The ability to grasp emotional messages in everyday gestures and respond to them is at the core of successful social communication. The hypothesis that abnormalities in socio-emotional behavior in people with autism are linked to a failure to grasp emotional significance conveyed by gestures was explored. We measured brain activity using fMRI…

The provision of services under Part C of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act is built on a premise that children benefit from early intervention. This article presents findings from a study of children adopted from China. Given information obtained from a survey, the researchers grouped children as (a) those who received early…

In this paper, I map important "messy" elements that I learned from my five-month small-scale research project, one that was designed around pivotal works on online social research. I used computers and the Internet with Minan, a young man living in Guinea, West Africa, in order to examine his perceptions surrounding the value of these…

Explains elements of helping children communicate: (1) recognize the need for child sending a message, (2) help him to put the message into language, (3) allow transmission of the message, and (4) decode the message. (DR)

Analyzes defensiveness in communication as caused by an unwillingness to acknowledge and tolerate differences in others, a fear of change in ourselves, and a desire to avoid mental imbalance. It causes a deteriorating cycle between communicators but can be reduced by empathy, treatment of fellow communicators as equals, and genuineness. (JMF)

Describes systematic desensitization as a form of behavior therapy for reducing anxiety. Examines its rationale and clinical practice and explores two features of the technique (relaxation and anxiety hierarchy) as they may be applied to classroom speech instruction for reticent students. (JMF)

Using both normal and delinquent families, this study attempts to assess patterns of inconsistency in three communication channels (verbal, tonal, and facial), with certain controls to strengthen the study's methodological base. When covariance procedures controlled for demographic variables, reliable differences between the two groups were…

A study investigated the relationship of trait emotion to Communication Apprehension (CA). It was hypothesized that (1) persons with high CA scores will have lower trait pleasure, arousal, dominance, and arousal seeking tendencies; and (2) a regression equation could be produced in which communication apprehension scores may be explained in terms…

A workshop type method of training teachers in the use of counseling techniques for facilitating parent teacher conferences is described. It is based on the Carkhuff model of attending, responding, initiating, and communicating. At each of the four stages, the leader first discusses its purpose and the specific behaviors to be encompassed in the…

The article explores the interaction between the cognitive and affective, or emotional, aspects of human behavior, particularly as it relates to deaf children. Learning problems can sometimes be traced to affective disabilities resulting from a deaf child's communication problems. The author stresses the importance of self-identity, a good home…

A series of five conferences are reported here on the problem of making the school more human by increasing understanding, the sense of community, and communication between students, teachers, and administrators. The first conferences explored the areas of necessary change which 275 students and 175 adults wanted to examine in the four remaining…

The author discusses the reactions and feelings black participants in T-groups experience. He suggests that integration of intellectualizing with emotional expression and using a common simple language would provide a more productive experience for black participants in groups. (SE)

From earliest infancy, a typically developing child imitates or mirrors the facial expressions, postures and gestures, and emotional behavior of others. Where does this capacity come from, and what function does it serve? What happens when imitation is impaired? Synthesizing cutting-edge research emerging from a range of disciplines, this…

A family therapy session was analyzed to understand how verbal and nonverbal behavior are related to the therapeutic process. (KW)