Percy H. Tannenbaum

Generation of active and passive sentences as a function of subject or object focus

It was reasoned that placing the conceptual focus on either the actor subject or on the acted-upon object of a simple situation would differentially affect the readiness to describe the situation in active or passive sentence forms. Conceptual focus was manipulated by use of a preamble which centered upon the subject or the object, with a control condition which focused upon neither. A secondary variable was whether the preamble remarks themselves were in the active or passive voice. Encoding readiness was assessed by the latency in generating prescribed sentence forms. Results supported the predictions, with the difference in latency between active and passive sentence generation increasing (from the baseline neutral focus condition) when the focus was on the actor subject, but decreasing markedly when the focus was on the acted-upon object. The preamble voice difference had little consequence as a main effect, but showed some tendency, not significant statistically, to interact with the conceptual-focus treatment.

The Congruity Principle Revisited: Studies in the Reduction, Induction, and Generalization Of Persuasion1

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses current applications of the congruity model. The simple and not atypical communication situation to which the congruity principle was originally applied is one in which an identifiable source makes an assertion about some concept or object. It can be applied in the manner to account for conditions under which attitudes toward the source, the concept, or both, will be expected to change; the change always depends on the precommunication attitudes toward both objects and on the nature of the assertion linking them. The attitude change occurs in response to the incongruity, and functions to reduce it. The chapter provides a report of research that concern with the opposite side of the attitude change coin. As so often happens, embarking on the program of research led to the consideration of related phenomena. For one thing, it raised anew the question of the relative efficacy of different modes of inducing, as well as reducing, attitude change. Because of the close theoretical affinity between promoting and reducing attitude change, this chapter includes several such investigations. Another, possibly serendipitous, consequence of this research is a closer look at the problem of the generalization of attitude change, also considered within the framework of congruity theory.

Word predictability in the environments of hesitations

Two experiments were conducted to study the predictability of words in hesitation contexts. The first study focused on a comparison of the first word after hesitations with words sampled from fluent contexts. The second study involved gathering predictability data for all words in a language sample. Results supported the hypothesis that words subsequent to hesitations tend to be less predictable than words uttered in fluent context. But the associated hypothesis that the word antecedent to hesitations is more predictable than other fluent context was not supported. This led to further analysis of predictability of words in the environments of different hesitations, specifically filled pauses and repeats. The implication drawn was that different types of hesitations index different kinds of encoding decision points.

Communication of Science Information: Presentations in the mass media are often based on a misconception of the public's interests and views

There are obvious limitations to normative studies of the kind described. Many of the studies dealt with special content areas—for example, mental health—and thus may not provide a sound basis for generalization. Selection of the various samples presented still greater problems. In some cases, the universe was so ill-defined (for example, that of science writers) that conventional sampling procedures were of doubtful significance. There were also limitations of subject availability and funds. Thus, we tended to proceed on an ad hoc basis, using more-or-less intact groups where we could find them—a group of scientists or a group of science writers attending an NSF-sponsored seminar; news editors from papers in the State of Wisconsin; and so on.

Communicator performance under cognitive stress.

What happens when a writer is given information which attacks his beliefs and thus puts him under stress? This research study shows it takes him longer to write his message, he makes more grammatical and spelling errors, he performs more editing, and the message is less readable.

The Effects of Bylines on Attitude Change

This department is devoted to shorter articles and notes on research in the communications field, either completed or in progress. Readers are invited to submit reports on investigative studies which might prove useful to other students because of content, method, or implications for further research.

Sensationalism: The Concept and its Measurement

Definitions and analyses of what is sensational have varied markedly. Using an empirical approach, the authors (1) identified dimensions of the judgment of “sensationalism” and (2) developed a semantic differential index of the sensationalism of messages. They describe their “Sendex” technique and its use.

The Indexing Process in Communication

During the past few years, a series of experiments relating to the effects of indices on the perception of communication messages has been conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois. The purpose of the present paper is to report the findings of this research in relation to other evidence and within the framework of the general indexing process. The author is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois.

Hesitation Phenomena and Related Encoding Characteristics in Speech and Typewriting

Intercorrelations among various hesitation phenomena, production variables, and message characteristics found in spoken responses were factor analysed in an attempt to establish a parsimonious description of basic attributes underlying encoding behaviour. For comparative purposes, a similar analysis was conducted on measures obtained from typewritten messages. The four factors found in the spoken messages were interpreted as : time spent in cognitive decision making, the amount of message produced, disruptions due to stress in the encoding situation, and degree of syntactic elaboration of sentences. Factors found in the analysis of typewritten messages only roughly approximated those found for speech. A subsequent analysis of part of speech frequencies in the two message types revealed additional syntactic distinctions between the two modes, distinctions which were attributed to the differential feedback conditions usually available in the different encoding situations.

Effects of Feedback on Oral Encoding Behaviour

The effect of knowledge of performance on oral encoding facility was investigated. Subjects were placed in an oral examination situation and were provided with ostensibly authentic (but actually manipulated) evaluations of their performance while they answered questions. Dependent variables included rate and duration of various hesitation phenomena, voice loudness, and stage fright. Positive feedback was found to have a slight but facilitative effect on encoding, while negative feedback appeared to be generally disruptive in its influence.