A 2-year study of optimal structures for multimedia instruction is being conducted to provide experimentally validated guidelines for the design of computer-based instruction generation systems and for human instruction in a multimedia setting. In order to obtain for analysis a significant range of the possible discourse structures that occur in…

This paper describes the future perspectives of biocybernetic communication research applied to television, i.e., the measurement of the information impact of television on both individual human beings and groups in terms of energetic changes in the human body. A summary of the recent state of the art of biocybernetic research includes discussions…

Political communication researchers recently have emphasized conditional relationships as crucial to specifying and understanding the effects of the mass media. In many cases, however, researchers will not predict which variables will modify the form or existence of media effects. They therefore will not include measures of the conditional…

The integration of American and European mass communication research models would provide a broader sociocultural framework for formulating communication policy. Emphasizing a functional approach, the American diffusionist model assumes that society is a system of interrelated parts naturally tending toward a state of dynamic equilibrium. The…

To explore the impact of the environment on perceptions of compliance gaining situations, 97 university students were asked to recall and describe situations in which they had had to persuade someone to do something. Their descriptions of compliance gaining situations were then evaluated for similarity by three additional groups of students. The…

This document reviews a number of recent studies written in French that investigate the nature of communication between 2-year-old infants and others. The review includes three parts. The first part focuses on studies aiming to constitute a behavioral catalog of the child. Characteristically, these studies offer a posteriori interpretations of…

Describes two experiments comparing how children evaluate three types of uninformative messages (ambiguous, incomplete, inconsistent) and whether and why the speaker's age affects the evaluation of each. (HOD)

Reports an investigation into pupil-talk in small groups during a computer simulation. The role of language as a communication and understanding aid is considered, along with the microcomputer's potential as a stimulus to and generator of discussion. The contents of participants' conversations, at and away from the microcomputer, are analyzed.…

Utilizes a sample of 225 first graders and 246 seventh graders to examine the imagery developed in response to neutral words. Finds that the children developed sex-specific masculine imagery in response to neutral messages, with boys doing so more frequently than girls, but the seventh graders used more inclusive imagery than the first graders.…

While language switching among multilinguals has been studied in a wide variety of contexts, few attempts have been made to generalize or to integrate findings into useful communication theory. Since language switching is an important part of personal as well as group identity and since issues surrounding language identity are often a focal point…

A study investigated the speaking styles of black college students to determine whether selected stylistic features of speeches of students at a predominantly black university were different from those of black college students at a predominantly white university. Audiotapes were made of 25 students at the predominantly black university and 21…

An ethnographic study was made of a student-led speech event in an ethnically mixed combined first- and second-grade classroom. In an activity called "Sharing Time," general rules governed appropriate ways of behaving, but no teacher rules governed ways of speaking, topic, or amount of time at talk. Collected over a 5-month period, data…

To investigate the speech of black college students for nonfluencies--linguistic elements breaking the flow of words or ideas--and to ascertain if students' attendance of a largely black or largely white university influenced their use of nonfluencies, 21 black students at a predominantly black university and 25 black students at a predominantly…

To derive a descriptive profile of communication role patterns and to determine whether these patterns were gender dependent, a Gender Communication Scale was developed by selecting scale items from other instruments that best discriminated reports of role behavior. The scale was then administered to 91 male and 148 female undergraduate students.…

To test two competing paradigms of the arousal-learning relationship--(1) increases in subject arousal will lead to increased learning in all but extreme cases of excitation, and (2) high subject arousal yields poor immediate memory but high ultimate memory--92 college students were presented with a tape recorded message in varying classroom…