Contends that the measure of a student's background knowledge and interest in an area of study significantly affect student ratings of instructors and courses. (MH)

Discusses a study designed to investigate the substructure of everyday social conversation which allows for judgments of competent communicative behavior or "communicative competence". Descriptions of perceived communicative competence characteristics are provided. (MH)

Attempts to identify personality characteristics of low-accuracy and high-accuracy perceivers of others' qualities in a population of graduate students in counselor training. (KS)

Outlines research using a behavioral measure of self-disclosure in a natural small group setting and compares the results with those obtained in a laboratory dyadic exchange. (MH)

Examines the effects of the sex of the receiver, the status of the communicator, and the mode of communication on the exchange of positive, neutral, and negative evaluations. (Author)

Discusses a survey of one hundred speech communication departments to determine practices and policies regarding selection and use of subjects in research. Looks at potential effects of generalizing research results from such a population and suggests methods for resolving generality problems in speech communication research. (MH)

Describes a study designed to test the circumplexical order hypothesis at the phenomenological level of conscious communication. (MH)

Investigates the effects of disclosure as perceived by the recipient with specific attention given to the recipient's level of self-esteem. (MH)

Reports results from an experiment conducted to discover relationships between theatre audience members' information processing abilities and their responses to performed plays and to the characters in the play. (MH)

Investigates interaction effects of the variables of leadership style and groupings of people on productivity and member satisfaction. (MH)

Stereotypes were found to both enhance and inhibit accuracy in citizen/government communication. (KS)

Reports on a study of 60 University of Georgia advertising majors' self-images and perceptions of the "successful" advertising executive. (KS)

Examines the effects of information distributed homogeneously or heterogeneously and the use of perspective-taking or egocentric presentation processes of information exchange on problem-solving dayds. (MH)

Examines various ways of reducing upward communication distortion and concludes that the communication channel used is a significant variable in the upward communication process. (MH)

This article introduces a special issue of "American Psychologist" on psychology and education. The perspective of the contributors is that educational progress benefits from systematic, thoughtful approaches to understanding how learning and teaching occur within various educational settings. The articles and their authors are introduced. (VM)