Examines whether delayed judgments of observed behaviors are more biased than immediate judgments. Finds that delayed judgments more closely approximate implicit theories of communicative competence. (SR)

The fact that little research has been conducted on the penalties for violating communication rules precipitated this study exploring the consequences of a superior lying to a subordinate and of a subordinate lying to a superior. The subjects were 82 college students who filled out attribution scales regarding the superior and subordinate depicted…

Antecedents of linguistic nonimmediacy were examined in a four-factor analysis of covariance with repeated measures design. Immediacy refers to the language of a message expressing a close relationship to the referent, while nonimmediacy suggests that the language expresses a more distant relationship. Subjects in the study were 118 college…

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…

Users of the placement service at the 1978 Speech Communication Association (SCA) convention were asked to complete a questionnaire to determine overall interest in nonacademic employment, specific interest areas of nonacademic employment, and perceived employment skills. Of the 241 questionnaires handed out, 141 were returned and 100 were used in…

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

A study was conducted to describe male and female participation and success in both debate and individual events national competition and to identify areas of gender-based inequity. Data from three 1984 national tournaments (National Debate Tournament, American Forensic Association's National Individual Events Tournament, and the National Forensic…

A study tested two hypotheses concerning credibility (an auditor's attitude toward a source) and arousal (attention level of an auditor): (1) the effect on learning of credibility will interact with the effect of the vigilance level of auditors, and (2) under conditions of low arousal, auditors will learn significantly more from a message if it is…

Presents validation, from a communication perspective, for semantic differential scales designed to measure attitude toward an object. The favorableness of sources' verbal behavior about an object was related to sources' attitudes toward the object. Receivers accurately estimated sources' attitudes and the favorableness of sources' verbal…

Refutes McGuire's analogy to inoculation theory used to predict resistance to beliefs that have not been attacked. An experimental test of effectiveness of different defenses over three belief levels is discussed. (JMF)

A total of 106 college graduates who had taken a basic communication course was surveyed to obtain their perspectives on communication training. Although the alumni rated communication skills as being highly important, three-fourths of them did not receive communication training after college. Most of the alumni felt either "fairly well" or "okay"…

The focus of the contributions to this journal issue is communication theory and research. Following an introductory article that deals with the need for quality control in the criticism of communication research, eight articles offer discussions of the following topics: the nature of criticism in rhetorical and communicative studies, some issues…

To analyze the usefulness of forensics judges' written comments and to understand how to improve ballots, a content analysis of 175 ballots from schools in a competition district was conducted. Categories for analysis included the following: (1) quantity of comments; (2) format of the ballot; (3) types of comments (including selection,…

Ten college classes of speech communication students were used to examine the relationships among prior attitude, mode of presentation, and distortion of a high intensity (positive) persuasive communication. Three classes heard messages while four classes read messages. The remaining three classes were not exposed to messages and served as a…

Presents a conceptualization that there is a strong relationship between the personality characteristic of communication apprehension and a set of theoretically relevant behaviors. Predicts an empirical distinction between apprehension and attitude, and compares three self-report measures of apprehension. (JMF)