A study compared the effectiveness of three different story-telling strategies on a preschool disabilities population. Participants were exposed to stories through oral story telling using auditory cues only, story telling with illustrations such as Big Books, or story telling using illustrations and puppets. Participants were asked to retell the…

This study develops a self-report inventory of public speaking apprehension that establishes measures of content, construct, and predictive validity. An item pool was generated by students that were anxious about giving speeches, and the resulting instrument was then administered to the general student population and factor analyzed. Each factor…

This study assessed the effect of room design on small-group communication patterns. Twenty-seven groups of three subjects each were assigned to nine types of rooms that differed with respect to shape, interior decoration, and other environmental elements. Subjects discussed a standard group-discussion topic. Data indicated that room design had no…

This study explores male/female patterns of dominance in dyadic speech communication in order to determine the influence of speaker's sex, speaker's commitment to the women's movement, and observer feedback on those patterns. College students (30 males and 30 females) responded to an "attitudes-toward-women" questionnaire and were classified as…

To determine the effectiveness of upward communication programs within nonindustrial companies in the United States, a study was devised that examined the ways in which top management and employees communicate. Of the 130 respondents to a survey of 300 top nonindustrial companies, 62 companies acknowledged that they maintained some type of upward…

This study compared the relative effectiveness of two communication-skills training models: Ivey's Microcounseling Paradigm and Carkhuff's Systematic Human Relations Training Model. After 107 educational psychology students volunteered to participate in the group that fit their schedules, treatments were randomly assigned. Pretesting and…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between responsivity to non-linguistic cues and accuracy in perception of others. The variables of sex of the perceiver and judgment of the same or opposite sex were also investigated. Using Shapiro's test of responsivity to linguistic or non-linguistic cues, 56 judges were selected who…

This master's thesis investigates the evaluative instruments currently available for measuring nonverbal behaviors in the classroom. Chapters discuss the following topics: classroom nonverbal communication, major and minor evaluative instruments, problems in current studies of nonverbal communication, and recommendations for further study of…

This study investigated the problem-solving effectiveness of family units, in order to account for social class differences in problem-solving ability. Basil Bernstein's theory concerning the role of speech styles in perception and information processing formed the basis for investigation; family speech styles, leadership patterns, and role…