Melanie Morgan

The interaction of inter-turn silence with prosodic cues in listener perceptions of ''trouble'' in conversation

The forms, functions, and organization of sounds and utterances are generally the focus of speech communication research; little is known, however, about how the silence between speaker turns shades the meaning of the surrounding talk. We use an experimental protocol to test whether listeners’ perception of trouble in interaction (e.g., disagreement or unwillingness) varies when prosodic cues are manipulated in the context of 2 speech acts (requests and assessments). The prosodic cues investigated were inter-turn silence and the duration, absolute pitch, and pitch contour of affirmative response tokens (‘‘yeah’’ and ‘‘sure’’) that followed the inter-turn silence. Study participants evaluated spoken dialogues simulating telephone calls between friends in which the length of silence following a request/assessment (i.e., the inter-turn silence) was manipulated in Praat as were prosodic features of the responses. Results indicate that with each incremental increase in pause duration (0–600–1200 ms) listeners perceived increasingly less willingness to comply with requests and increasingly weaker agreement with assessments. Inter-turn silence and duration of response token proved to be stronger cues to unwillingness and disagreement than did the response token’s pitch characteristics. However, listeners tend to perceive response token duration as a cue to ‘‘trouble’’ when inter-turn silence cues were, apparently, ambiguous (less than 1 s). � 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Taking Initiative in the Age of Assessment

Assessment is an increasingly important part of communication pedagogy, not just for periodic accreditation reviews but for ongoing justifications for resources and course design. This project relates the story of how another college at our university prompted us to prove that our Science Writing and Presentation course really delivered what it was supposed to deliver. Our resulting assessment allowed us to maintain control over the course and how it would be measured, along with providing us with data we are leveraging to demonstrate student learning outcomes while maintaining and even extending the impact of our course and attracting increased instructional resources.

Older Parents and Adult Daughters: A Comparison of Communication and Coping During the Decision to Move to a Care Facility

This study sought to understand the ways that adult daughters and their parents make sense of the older adult’s aging and one another’s changing roles within the context of the decision to move a parent to a care-related facility. In particular, the decision to move a parent to a care-related facility provides a context for the study of uncertainty, ambivalence, and other concerns connected with role transitions and decision-making difficulties. How older parents and adult daughters communicate about and cope with these challenges was compared. Babrow’s problematic integration theory provides a framework for this research. A qualitative study employing in-depth interviews with 44 residents at continuum-of-care facilities and 12 adult daughters of residents was conducted. Findings indicate that both parents and daughters experience significant problematic integration. However, their attempts to cope are in marked contrast to one another. These differences, along with theoretical and practical implications, are discussed further.

The Creative Character of Talk: Individual Differences in Narrative Production Ability

The creative character of human message behavior is at once ubiquitous and elusive. Our talk is routinely novel, and yet our understanding of the processes that give rise to such creativity is in its infancy. Moreover, everyday experience suggests that some people are simply better at “thinking on their feet” than are others. The current studies sought to ascertain whether people do, indeed, differ in their ability to produce novel messages or whether our impression of individual differences is more perceived than actual. Two studies involving examination of simple SITUATION-ACTION-BECAUSE narratives are reported. The results of Study 1 suggest that people do differ in their message-production abilities. Additional analyses suggest that this individual difference in message-production ability is distinct from extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism as assessed by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. EPQ lie-scale scores were, however, related to narrative-production performance, and this may reflect differences in social knowledge and skill. Study 2 replicated the finding of an individual difference in narrative-production ability and again indicated that performance in the experimental paradigm is related to lie-scale scores, but not extraversion or neuroticism (as those dimensions are assessed by the EPI). Additional findings in both studies relate message fluency to the cognitive demands of narrative production. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

A Phrase Well Turned: Creative Facility in Narrative Production

It is commonly recognized that messages are simultaneously patterned and creative, but studies of message production have tended to focus on repetitive features of messages, to the relative exclusion of examination of their novel characteristics. This study is concerned with creative facility—the ability readily to construct novel, appropriate messages. In order to investigate this phenomenon, subjects produced a series of simple SITUATION-ACTION-BECAUSE narratives and also completed measures of speed of information processing (Digit-Symbol Substitution Test, DSST), cognitive tempo (Matching Familiar Figures Test, MFFT), and need for cognitive structure (Personal Need for Structure scale, PNS). Results indicate each of these measures was related to the speed with which participants were able to formulate their narratives. Moreover, the impact of both cognitive tempo, assessed as number of errors on the MFFT, and need for cognitive structure was heightened under more cognitively demanding message-production conditions. Implications of these results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Formative Communication Experiences and Message Production Ability in Adulthood: Family Communication Patterns and Creative Facility

Everyday experience suggests that there are individuals who are “glib,” who are “quick-witted,” and who can “think on their feet.” This ability to formulate fluent, novel messages has been termed creative facility, and previous research has identified various personality trait and information processing correlates of the phenomenon. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether formative communication experiences (i.e., family communication patterns) might be related to creative facility in a sample of young adults. The results indicated that people reporting a high family conformity orientation tended to be less fluent in formulating simple novel narratives and, further, that this effect was heightened under more cognitively demanding encoding conditions. Family conversation orientation did not have an effect on message fluency.

Home Sweet Home: Conceptualizing and Coping With the Challenges of Aging and the Move to a Care Facility

This study sought to understand how older adults make sense of the challenges of aging. In particular, the move to a care-related facility provides a context for the study of how uncertainty, ambivalence, and other concerns connected with the aging process are conceptualized by older adults. Furthermore, how older adults communicate about and cope with these challenges was examined. Babrows (1992, 2007) problematic integration theory provides a framework for this research. A qualitative study employing in-depth interviews with 44 older adults from two continuum-of-care facilities was conducted. Findings indicate that the participants experienced problematic integration concerning physical declines, changes in the parent–child relationship, and the decision to move to a care-related facility. In coping with these challenges, older adults focused on positive evaluations, reframing, acceptance, and adaptation. By and large most of the coping mechanisms that older adults employed help explain their success in maintaining a positive outlook, achieving satisfaction with their move and their family communication, and adapting to the challenges of aging.

An Examination of Nurses’ Intergenerational Communicative Experiences in the Workplace: Do Nurses Eat Their Young?

The modern workforce is becoming increasingly older, and because of this demographic shift, intergenerational interactions are more common. However, these interactions are often described negatively and could be exaggerated when housed in a workplace setting. This study explores intergenerational communication in the increasingly diverse nursing profession through the lens of communication accommodation theory. Specifically, 32 nurses were interviewed in order to understand how they experience and describe intergenerational communication in the healthcare context. Through an abductive approach to data analysis, we found three interrelated findings: (a) intergenerational hostility is commonplace, (b) intergenerational hostility is socialized, and (c) nurses are viewed as a dispensable resource. These findings were communicated and justified through the colloquialism “nurses eat their young.” Theoretical implications related to communication accommodation theory and the Communication Predicament Model of Aging were developed along with practical suggestions that focus on ways to disrupt the acceptance of intergenerational hostility, enhance intergenerational communication in the workplace, and create a space for structural change.

Explicit Versus Implicit Stereotypes: “What Biases Do I Really Hold?”

Course(s): Interpersonal, Intercultural, Organizational, Gender, Research Methods, or the Basic Course.

Investigating the effects of an employee wellness coaching intervention on patient engagement and healthcare costs

Abstract Responding to the burden of rising healthcare costs, employers have turned to wellness coaching, a holistic behavioral intervention designed to help clients attain wellness-promoting goals across a range of areas. This study was conducted to test the effects of a wellness coaching intervention on indicators of patient engagement and healthcare costs. Through the use of propensity scoring techniques, employees in a variety of large organizations throughout a local community in the Midwest who participated in a wellness coaching intervention were randomly matched with noncoached participants on key characteristics to create a meaningful comparison group to test treatment effects. Medical claims data from 300 coached participants were compared with 964 noncoached employees. Differences in current and projected healthcare costs and indicators of patient engagement with the healthcare system were examined. Results revealed that coached participants saw an increase in current and projected healthcare costs and indicators of patient engagement. Indicators of patient engagement mediated the relationship between coaching participation and healthcare cost outcomes. Over time, current and projected healthcare costs decreased whereas indicators of patient engagement remained the same. It appears that wellness coaching is a beneficial intervention that may save employers money on healthcare expenditures down the road.