The relationships of trait verbal aggressiveness and frequency of viewing and enjoyment of television sitcoms

Verbal aggressiveness is the tendency to attack the self‐concept of another person with the intent to inflict psychological pain (Infante & Wigley, 1986). This study focused on how low and high verbally aggressives differ in the television sitcoms they watch and how enjoyable they find those shows. Participants (N = 555) first completed the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale. Then they were asked how often they watch particular television sitcoms and if they watched a given sitcom, how entertaining they found that show to be. The sitcoms included in this study were those that were televised in April 1996. Of the 33 shows included in the analyses, low verbal aggressives differed from high verbal aggressives on 8 shows for frequency of watching and on 11 shows for entertainment value.     

Communcating emotional support and its relationship to feelings of being understood,trust, and self‐disclosure

The communicating of emotional support would seem to be an aspect of any successful relationship. Additionally, it would seem to reason that how one communicates emotional support would be an aspect of a relationship pertinent to communication research. Unfortunately, there is very little empirical evidence that illuminates how this is related to other relational outcomes such as trust. Weber and Patterson (1996) first developed a measure that taps into how much emotional support one receives from a specific other. In their initial scale development piece the authors validate the Communication Based Emotional Support Scale (CBESS) by finding positive correlations with both relationship solidarity and relationship satisfaction. This current study aimed to further validate the CBESS by exploring its relationship to trust, self‐disclosure, and feelings of being understood.     

Examining the Exam: A Critical Look at The California Critical Thinking Skills Test

This paper examines the content of The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (1990). This report is not a statistical review. Instead it brings under scrutiny the content of the exam. This content will be of interest to the general reader, because the issues range from logic to ethics to pedagogy, and to questions of evidential and epistemological support. Anyone interested in clear thought and expression will find these issues of significance. Although the exam has a number of strengths and has the clearest instructions of all the presently available Critical Thinking exams, the content of 9 of the exams 34 questions is defective, namely the content of questions 6, 7, 8, 19, 21, 23, 24, 29, and 33. These questions make errors in critical thinking. Hence, no statistical results pertaining to the administration of these questions to students can be acceptable. The remaining questions are acceptable as to content. But until the problems are corrected, those who may use the exam should remove the defective questions from test administration or from data collection and reporting.The scope of the exam also is quite limited, but this may be unavoidable for any instrument designed to be completed in about an hour. Further, the scores resulting from any such testing can be understood only as a measure of minimal competency (below which remediation likely is needed) for the skills tested, but not as an adequate measure of critical thinking.Disclosure: Three of the authors are engaged in producing and marketing a critical thinking test. Though this paper was written before any of us considered developing such a test, the reader should be informed. Each of the writers has exercised considerable care to avoid any bias, and we thank our independent reviewers for helping us in this regard as well.     

Schleicher Klaus,und Möller,Christian (Hrsg.). 1997. Umweltbildung im Lebenslauf. Altersspezifisches und generationsübergreifendes Lernen. Münster/New York/München/Berlin: Waxmann.

International Review of Education -     

Charting a Future for fMRI in Communication Science

Neuroscientific investigations into communication phenomena using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are becoming increasingly popular in communication science. This presents opportunities for new discoveries, but also for the rapid spread of questionable practices. Here, we look to the future of fMRI in communication science: first, highlighting and advocating for several relatively new methods that should enable communication scholars to address novel research questions; and second, pointing out various controversies or pitfalls that exist in the use of several of the more widely used fMRI analysis methods within the field. Given the rapidly changing nature of the fMRI analysis landscape, such reflection is an essential part of being a good scholar in this domain. Our aim is to ensure that the future of fMRI in communication science is healthy, robust, and rich in variety, by encouraging all researchers in the field to think critically about the methods they use, whether that means adopting new analysis methods that can answer previously unanswerable questions, or adjusting their use of methods they already use to align with the latest recommended practices.     

Preschoolers' Classroom Activities and Interactions with Peers and Teachers

The present study was designed to investigate whether or not preschool children's classroom activities and interactions vary according to the power structure of their relationships. We examined the frequencies of children's play and problem-solving activities, and management, collaboration, and assistance interactions in these activities as a function of children's relationships with their teachers and peers. We had two expectations: 1) Preschool children would engage in problem-solving activities with their teachers, who are inherently more powerful; but they would engage in play activities with their peers with whom they share power. 2) Teacher-child interactions would involve primarily management and assistance but child-peer interactions would involve collaborations. We observed 55 children during their free-activity, noting partners, and narrating the actions and utterances of all the participants in writing during the observations. Our analyses were based on the coding of narratives, and they revealed that the power structure of children's relationships plays a role in their activities and interactions. We found that children's problem-solving occurred with both teachers and peers. Play activities occurred overwhelmingly with peers. Management and assistance took place mostly in teacher-child interaction, but collaboration occurred primarily with peers. These findings support the developmental theory that adults and peers contribute to children's development and education through different kinds of activities and interactions.     

Making Real Analysis Relevant to Secondary Teachers: Building Up from and Stepping Down to Practice

Future teachers often claim that advanced undergraduate courses, even those that attempt to connect to school mathematics, are not useful for their teaching. This paper proposes a new way of designing advanced undergraduate content courses for secondary teachers. The model involves beginning with an analysis of the curriculum and practices of school mathematics and its teaching, and then using those to build up to the advanced mathematics – in this case, real analysis. After developing definitions, examples, theorems, and proofs, the model then reconnects to practice, asking the teachers to translate ideas from real analysis in ways that are appropriate for teaching high school content to students. To illustrate the model, we provide and discuss two example tasks.     

Social Interactions in the Home and the Development of Young Children's Conceptions of the Personal

Observations and interviews of 20 middle-class 3- and 4-year-olds and their mothers were conducted to examine the emergence of the personal domain. Interviews with children showed that 3- and 4-year-olds make a conceptual distinction between personal, and moral or conventional issues. Interviews with mothers indicated that they viewed it as important for young children to have freedom of choice over personal issues to develop a sense of autonomy and individuality. Observations in the home revealed that mothers tended to give direct social messages to children about moral, conventional, and prudential events, and were more likely to give indirect social messages in the form of offered choices to children in response to personal issues. Mothers were more likely to negotiate with children over personal than other social events. These data revealed a pattern of social interactions concordant with event domain, which included a reciprocal system along the border between the personal and the conventional.     

The Impact of Relational Characteristics and Reasons for Topic Avoidance on Relational Closeness

Although research suggests that the act of topic avoidance itself has consequences for romantic partners, it seems equally likely that the antecedent conditions underlying these decisions to avoid certain topics also lead to important relational outcomes. Framed by communication boundary management theory, relationship characteristics, motivation for topic avoidance, and implications for relational closeness were examined. Findings indicate that relational commitment characteristics and individuals' reported rationale for topic avoidance are related to perceptions of relational closeness. These results illustrate the importance of understanding the underlying factors that motivate the decision to engage in topic avoidance and their impact on romantic relationships.