False‐Belief Understanding and Social Preference Over the First 2 Years of School: A Longitudinal Study

The role of false belief in establishing children's social relationships during the transition to school was examined and compared to other social cognitive constructs. One hundred and fourteen 5‐year‐olds were recruited during their 1st year of school (Time 1); 106 children were retained 1 year later. False belief, emotion expression recognition, empathy, verbal ability, and peer‐rated social preference were measured at both times. False belief at Time 1 had a direct influence on concurrent social preference, over and above the influence of emotion expression recognition and empathy. False belief made no independent contribution to later social preference accounting for stability in social preference. The role of social cognitive development is discussed with respect to how children establish and maintain their position in a peer group.     

Supervision Experiences of Professional Counselors Providing Crisis Counseling

In this phenomenological study, the authors explored supervision experiences of 13 licensed professional counselors in situations requiring crisis counseling. Five themes concerning crisis and supervision were identified from individual interviews. Findings support intensive, immediate crisis supervision and postlicensure clinical supervision.     

Problem-based learning used in the context of cardiac rehabilitation: different scenes and different roles

Several studies show that how patients have difficulties in changing lifestyle even though such changes are essential because they are suffering from a life-threatening disease. Coronary artery disease (CAD) patients met 13 times during a year and used problem-based learning (PBL) to improve their empowerment and self-efficacy in making lifestyle changes. District nurses functioned as tutors, helping patients to formulate issues and to state self-care goals. To identify and describe the enactment of PBL, an ethnographic approach was used, including, for example, participant observations and interviews, all derived from six sessions of the education programme. Five different enactments were found, metaphorically expressed as: ‘The study circle’, ‘The classroom’, ‘The expert consultation’, ‘The therapy session’ and ‘The coffee party’. The education programme did not always function as it was supposed to according to the model, but perhaps this should not be seen as a failure of the pedagogical intervention since these enactments as a whole seem to be a way for the patients to be able to make healthy lifestyle changes. The metaphors can broaden the understanding of what can happen when implementing problem-based learning in health care practice.     

The Teacher as Thinker

The authors explore how and to what extent students use their textbooks. Data was collected through a survey regarding when reading is primarily done, how the textbook is used for studying, and which specific study strategies the students used. The results indicate that students know it is important to read, know the professor expects them to read, and know it will impact their grade, yet most students still do not read the textbook. Finally, we also examine what students feel would motivate them to increase their usage of the textbook.     

Evaluation fidelity: An examination of criterion‐based assessment and rater training in the speech communication classroom

The purpose of this study was to further investigate the effectiveness of speech evaluation procedures and measures. Specifically, this study examines the relationship between rater training and evaluation fidelity— a concept which focuses on the shared understanding of meaning between speech raters and students in terms of what is expected and what is performed. To do so, two studies were conducted. Study one hypothesized that evaluation fidelity would be associated with rater training such that inter‐rater (instructor‐instructor) reliability would be higher after training. The findings suggest that participants in Study one increased their evaluation fidelity in terms of total scores. The variance and frequency reports confirmed that the range of scores decreased (higher evaluation fidelity) after training. Study two hypothesized that instructors who provided their students with training in using the “Criteria for Evaluating Speeches” form would achieve higher evaluation fidelity than those instructors who do not. Results support this hypothesis and reveal higher evaluation fidelity between instructors and students in the group where students received a copy and explanation of the criterion‐based assessment tool.     

An essay on publishing standards for rhetorical criticism

Managing private health information in the workplace has become a salient communication issue for employees, supervisors, and organizations. The primary objective of this investigation is to explore employees’ perceptions of and preferences for communicating about health information in the workplace. A qualitative focus group study was conducted using Communication Privacy Management Theory (CPM) as a framework to organize the questions employees face about sharing personal health information. Forty-nine workers were recruited to participate in nine focus groups. The results demonstrate a variety of contextual influences and behaviors relating to employees’ preferences for discussing health information at work. Specifically, the researchers identified five emergent themes in the data: rules for sharing private information, boundary coordination, reasons for permeable boundaries, reasons for impermeable boundaries, and organizational environment and conditions. The data parallel CPM and have practical implications for managers aiming to improve the regulation of health information in the workplace.     

Books and Publishing

Donald R. McCoy The National Archives: America's Ministry of Documents, 1934-1968 (Chapel Hill, Yniversity of North Carolina Press, 1978—$19.00)

Madeleine B. Stern Books and Book People in 19th Century America (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1978—$25.00)

Susan Otis Thompson American Book Design and William Morris (New York: Bowker, 1977—$29.95)     

Using Communication Infrastructure Theory to Formulate a Strategy to Locate “Hard-to-Reach” Research Participants

In health-communication research, participants who are disproportionately affected by health disparities are often “hard-to-reach,” making them difficult to identify for formative research. This study used communication infrastructure theory (CIT) to create a strategy for locating a specific subset of residents—those who use 911 for healthcare—within a low-income Atlanta community. Findings suggest the need for strategies that involve employing both the communication channels that are part of the neighborhood storytelling network and the community's discursive spaces, more specifically the communication hot spots and community comfort zones located within the community's built environment.     

Aggressive Behavior of Nursery School Children and Adult Procedures in Dealing with Such Behavior

This study explored the influence of an excessively challenging reading task on middle school students’ motivation, attributions for failure, and persistence. In particular, the authors considered the possibility that relative topic interest might function as a buffer against the negative outcomes of excessive challenge. Students ranging from 10 to 14 years of age read a passage that was well beyond their current reading ability under 2 matched experimental conditions: high relative topic interest and low relative topic interest. Higher relative interest in the story topic buffered some of the negative influences of excessive challenge, sustaining interest/enjoyment of the task, and was related to fewer attributions for difficulty to any cause and persistence with the task.