Investigates communication and organizational codependency: (1) explores literature that presents human organizations as both "open" and "closed" systems; (2) reviews literature describing the symbolic construction of organizational systems; (3) identifies and describes communicative behaviors and strategies that fuel…

Finds that the romantic loneliness dimension of the Differential Loneliness Scale is related to decoding ability, and that there are moderate linear relationships among several of the dimensions of the Differential Loneliness Scale, the self-report of listening ability, and participants' view of their own decoding ability. (SR)

Defines virtual reality as a particular type of experience (in terms of "presence" and "telepresence") rather than as a collection of hardware. Maintains that media technologies can be classified and studied in terms of vividness and interactivity, two attributes on which virtual reality ranks very high. (SR)

Reviews criticism of Philip Wander's 1983 article, "The Ideological Turn in Modern Criticism." Shows how critics of Wander's "ideological criticism" subscribed to an essentialist notion of rhetoric, adopted a theory of innocent reading, and displayed unexamined prejudices about canonical texts. Urges academic rhetoricians to acknowledge that all…

Suggests that artificial neural networks (ANNs) exhibit properties that promise usefulness for policy researchers. Notes that ANNs have found extensive use in areas once reserved for multivariate statistical programs such as regression and multiple classification analysis and are developing an extensive community of advocates for processing text…

Proposes a mathematical model to incorporate the strengths of both the classic approach to agenda-setting research and the time-series technique. Tests the model with data on three issues. Finds both mutual competition and one-way attraction among issues. (SR)

Speculates about mindfulness on the context of practical applications, by everyday communicators, of whatever modifications to communication can be suggested by research. Reviews tact strategies as a brief example. (SR)

Investigates the role of type of embarrassing predicament and dispositional embarrassability on remedial responses used by students caught in embarrassing situations. Finds and describes contextual and individual determinants for the use of apologies, accounts, humor, aggression, and apologies in conjunction with other strategies. (SR)

Reports two studies of the process by which supportive messages in nonintimate relationships yield positive outcomes. Finds that an offer of assistance to a person working on a stressful cognitive task improves performance and that supportive messages (regardless of form) are perceived by observers as beneficial to a person working on a…

Proposes a taxonomy that classifies coherence relations in discourse in terms of four cognitively salient primitives, such as the polarity of the relationship and the pragmatic or semantic character of the link between the units. Finds experimental support for the relevance and psychological salience of the taxonomic primitives. (SR)

Examines the relationship between a sentence and its context by exploring the role of partial repetition in the interpretation of a text and its component sentences. Shows patterns in the lexico-semantic interactions in a text, and shows that these patterns affect the interpretation of the text's individual messages. (SR)

Responds to an article in an earlier issue of this journal. Restates the topic as "Why are there so few theories of human communication?" Discusses why there is a lack of theories on the nature of human communication and offers suggestions intended to promote the development of such theories. (SR)

Replies to four responses to an earlier article by the author in this journal on the relative lack of original theory development in the field of communication. (SR)

Finds that readers of a news report featuring extreme exemplar distortion considered carjacking a more serious problem than those who read reports featuring minimally, mildly, or substantially distorted exemplars. Finds that subjects overestimated the incidence of extreme outcome but did not differ in evaluations of newsworthiness, importance, or…

Examines divergences of self-reported from observed communication behavior. Finds that perceived relationship to the group explained 59% of the variance of the average size of commission errors, and the collective communication load on members explained 61% of the variance in the number of omission errors. Proposes a model relating situated…