Nonverbal immediacy in the physician/patient relationship

This study examined the relationships between the nonverbal immediacy of physicians and their patients’ satisfaction with them as doctors and overall medical care. Consistent with the results of previous studies in the instructional and organizational communication areas, substantial associations were found in this medical context. Patients who see their physicians as more immediate report more satisfaction with the physician and are generally more satisfied with the medical care they receive. The patients also indicated experiencing less fear of their physician when the physician was more immediate.     

Facets of Pavlovian temperament as correlates of communication apprehension

Recently, communication scholars have become interested in relationships between communication apprehension and the underlying biological predispositions for behavior called temperament. The resulting communibiological paradigm is said to account for individual differences in communicative behavior and adaptation to speaking situations. Because temperament is conceived as a multidimensional construct, the precise biologically determined predispositions influencing temperamental expression are yet to be discovered. In this research, Strelau's Pavlovian temperament theory is applied to this problem. Facets of the Pavlovian Temperament Survey were related to McCroskey's (1978) Personal Report of Communication Apprehension. Results suggest a moderate level of interdependence between communication apprehension and several facets of Pavlovian temperament.     

A cross‐cultural test of the association between temperament and communication apprehension

The research reported in his study was a cross‐cultural test of the communibiological model of communication apprehension as temperamental expression. The study was designed to replicate the findings reported by Beatty, McCroskey, and Heisel (1998) in the U.S. and Japan. In this study participants from Japan and the U.S. completed measures of communication apprehension, neurotitism, and extroversion. The results indicated that, for both Japanese and U.S. college students, scores on the measure of communication apprehension were significantly correlated with measures of neuroticism and extroversion. Multiple regression analyses indicated that both neuroticism and extroversion predicted unique variance in communication in both cultures and that the multiple correlations for the two cultures did not differ significantly. It was concluded that the replication was successful and that temperament scores are substantially predictive of communication apprehension across the cultures tested.     

Disposition versus situation: Neurocommunlcology and the influence of trait apprehension versus situational factors on state public speaking anxiety

Research indicates that individuals with elevated levels of public speaking anxiety report significantly different mental representations of the public speaking context, when compared to individuals with lower levels of anxiety. To examine the effect of the differences in mental representations, narratives for three public speaking contexts were developed. Results indicated that disposition (i.e., trait apprehension) was a better predictor of state anxiety when giving an impromptu speech. Situational factors (i.e., importance, skills, impression), however, were better predictors of state anxiety when either giving a speech to a 5^th grade class or giving a speech to friends.     

The development of the teacher clarity short inventory (TCSI) to measure clear teaching in the classroom

This study presents the Teacher Clarity Short Inventory (TCSI) as an alternative to existing measures of teacher clarity. Though existing scales measure both the clarity of content and classroom processes, they are disproportionate in length when compared to common instructional measures, such as measures of immediacy, student state motivation, and student affect. Analyses revealed a 10 item scale with an acceptable factor structure, acceptable reliability and validity. Furthermore, the instrument measures both the clarity of instructional content and instructional processes.     

Communication apprehension and the type‐a personality

Do Type‐A individuals experience communication apprehension? Consistent with theoretical expectations, the data at hand suggest the answer is a qualified “no.” Individuals evidencing a Type‐A personality reported significantly less CA than their Type‐B counterparts. This pattern of findings was strongest for apprehension about communicating in “collective” contexts (e.g., public, group, meeting) but diminished for CA in more “intimate” circumstances (e.g., interpersonal).     

Eysenck's BIG THREE and communication traits: Communication traits as manifestations of temperament

Two studies are reported which sought to determine the possible limitations of the proposition that “temperament is manifest through communication.”; The results of earlier studies suggest that many communication related traits indeed are correlated with one or more temperament variables. In the present study Willingness to Communicate, Singing Apprehension, and Innovativeness were found to be associated with one or more of the BIG THREE temperament variables. Writing apprehension was found to have no meaningful relationship with any of the temperament variables. It is concluded that, while most important oral communication traits probably are correlated with one or more temperament traits, some other communication traits, like writing apprehension, may not be.     

Willingness to communicate: A cross‐cultural investigation

This study examined the means of and correlations between perceptions of willingness to communicate, communication apprehension, and communication competence of college students in the United States and Australia. Comparisons indicated a high degree of similarity in the relationships between communication orientations in the two cultures but substantial differences between the cultures in terms of mean scores on willingness to communicate and self‐perceived communication competence. Results of the study suggest similarities between people of two different cultures on one communication orientation do not necessarily indicate similarities on other communication orientations. However, relationships between orientations may have some generalizability across cultures.     

Public interest programming: Taxation by regulation

This study examined the relationships among viewers’ family communication patterns, sex and pregnancy experience, music video viewing motivations, and viewers’ cognitive processing of a music video about teenage pregnancy. Respondents were high school students, who watched a music video and filled out questionnaires on two occasions. Results of a path analysis demonstrated different paths for girls and boys: For girls, family communication patterns and sexual/pregnancy experience were directly related to the activity with which they processed the video; for boys, family communication patterns had a direct path to activity, but also had a path through observational goals. Results suggest that family communication patterns may operate as enduring general cognitive structures that predict viewer activity.     

Media violence research: Interpreting the findings

The pages which follow are an attempt to stand back and assess what we know about the effects of media violence in an effort to sort into a usable pattern the results of hundreds of reported studies. Timothy P. Meyer is assistant professor of speech in Mass Communications at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; James A. Anderson is associate professor of radio‐television and director of the Broadcast Research Center at Ohio University, Athens.