The Relationships of Perceived Health Professionals’ Communication Traits and Credibility with Perceived Patient Confidentiality

Patients at a large medical clinic provided data permitting an analysis of the relationships of perceived communication behaviors (nonverbal immediacy, assertiveness, and responsiveness) and source credibility (competence and caring) with perceptions of the confidentiality of their medical records. Perceptions of physicians, nurses, and support staff were employed. The results indicate that patients’ perceptions of the communication behaviors and credibility of physicians, nurses, and support staff are meaningfully related to patients’ perceptions of confidentiality. The problems of actual confidentiality and perceived confidentiality are discussed in relation to the role of communication as part of the problem and a potential part of the solution.     

Orthographic processing and visual sequential memory in unexpectedly poor spellers

Does unexpectedly poor spelling in adults result from inferior visual sequential memory? In one experiment, unexpectedly poor spellers performed significantly worse than better spellers in the immediate reproduction of sequences of visual symbols, but in a second experiment, the effect was not replicated. Poor spellers were also no worse at the immediate recognition of symbol sequences. Overall, the results indicate that inferior visual memory is not characteristic of unexpectedly poor spellers. However, they do have less efficient orthographic processing skill: they were significantly slower and more error prone than better spellers at classifying both regularly and strangely spelt words, as well as at detecting letter transpositions in long words. They can thus be considered as subtly worse word readers than better spellers. While the findings question the notion of unexpectedly poor spelling in relation to normal adults, they provide confirmation of the intimate relationship between reading and spelling processes.     

Inferential talk during teacher–child interactions in small-group play

This study examined teachers’ questions and children's responses during a play-based activity implemented in small groups within preschool classrooms. The first aim of this study was to describe teachers’ questions in terms of four levels of abstraction (i.e., a continuum of literal to inferential questions) and children's responses to these questions. The second aim was to examine the relations between teachers’ questions and children's responses using sequential analyses, to include children's level of abstraction and mean length of utterance (MLU). Participants were 39 teachers and up to six children from their preschool classroom. We found that teachers’ questions made up an average of 25% of their talk to children during play, and were relatively balanced between literal and inferential questions. Furthermore, significant sequential associations were found between the level of abstraction of teachers’ questions and the level of abstraction of children's responses (e.g., teachers’ inferential questions tended to elicit children's inferential responses). Finally, we found that teachers’ inferential questions were not related to children's MLU; that is, teachers’ more abstract questions did not elicit longer utterances from children. These findings suggest that play is a valuable context in which teachers may promote children's use of inferential language.     

Longitudinal prediction and prevention of early reading difficulty

The results of many studies suggest that early reading problems are associated with deficiencies in certain spoken language skills. Children who encounter reading difficulty tend to be deficient in the perception of spoken words, the ability to retain linguistic material in temporary memory, and the ability to comprehend certain spoken sentences, as well as in their awareness about the phonological structure of spoken words. This paper summarizes these findings and provides an explanation in terms of the requirements of skilled reading. It further reviews the results of two longitudinal studies which show that inferior performance in kindergarten tests of language skills may presage future reading problems in the first grade. Based on these studies, procedures are suggested for kindergarten screening and for some ways of aiding children who, by virtue of inferior performance on the screening tests, might be considered at risk for early reading difficulties. Presented at the 33rd Annual Conference of The Orton Dyslexia Society, San Diego, California, November 1983. This paper was prepared while the author was a Fulbright Fellow at the Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics at the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. Much of the research herein described was supported by NICHD Grant HD-01994 and BRS Grant 05596 to Haskins Laboratories, Inc.