From syllables to fluent speech, it is important for infants to quickly learn and decipher linguistic information. To do this, infants must not only use their auditory perception but also their visual perception to understand speech and language as a multisensory coherent event. Previous research by Lewkowicz and Hansen-Tift (2012) demonstrated that infants shift their allocation of visual attention from the eyes to the mouth of the speaker's face throughout development as they become interested in speech production. This project examined how infants, from 4-14-months of age, allocate their visual attention to increasingly complex speech tasks. In Experiment 1, infants were presented with upright and inverted faces vocalizing syllables and the results demonstrated that in response to the upright faces, 4-month-old infants attended to the eyes and 8- and 10-month-olds attended equally to the eyes and mouth. In response to the inverted face presentation, both the 4- and 10-month-olds attended equally to the eyes and mouth but the 8-month olds attended to the eyes. In Experiment 2, infants were presented with a phoneme matching task (Patterson & Werker, 1999, 2002, 2003) and the results demonstrated that the 4-month-old infants successfully matched the voice to the corresponding face, but that older infants did not. Measures of their selective attention to this task showed that the 4-month-old infants attended more to the eyes of the faces during the task, not attending to the redundant speech information at the mouth, but older infants attended equally to the eyes and mouth, although they did not match the voice to the face. Experiment 3 presented infants with a fluent speech matching task (Lewkowicz et al., 2015) which demonstrated that although the infants (12-14-months) did not systematically match the voice to the corresponding face, the infants attended more to the mouth region, which would have provided them with the neces sary redundant information. Overall, these studies demonstrate that there are developmental changes in how infants distribute their visual attention to faces as they learn about speech and that the complexity of the speech is a critical factor in how they allocate their visual attention. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

by Victoria Po-tong Cheung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1982 / Bibliography : leaves 158-162

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Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

This thesis is based around five studies examining the psychology of interpersonal communication applied to organizational settings. The studies are designed to examine the question of how the way that people in positions of power in organizations communicate with subordinates, affects various measures of health, well-being and productivity. It is impossible to study modern organisational communication without recognising the importance of electronic communication. The use of e-mail and other forms of text messaging is now ubiquitous in all areas of communication. The studies in this thesis include the use of e-mail as a medium of communication and examine some of the potential effects of electronic versus face-to-face and verbal communication. The findings of the studies support the basic hypothesis that: it is not what is said that matters but how it is said. The results showed that an unsupportive, formal, authoritarian style of verbal or written communication is likely to have a negative effect on health, well-being and productivity compared with a supportive, informal and egalitarian style. There are also indications that the effects of damaging communications may not be confined to the initial recipient of the message. Organizational communication does not take place in a vacuum. Any negative consequences are likely to be transmitted by the recipient, either back to the sender or on to other colleagues with implications for the wider organisational climate. These findings are based on communications that would not necessarily be immediately recognised as obviously offensive or bullying, or even uncivil. The effects of these relatively mild but unsupportive communications may have implications for the selection and training of managers. In the final section of the thesis there is a discussion of how examples of various electronically recorded messages might be used as training material.

The occurrence of child sex abuse in the United States has long been considered a problem of paramount importance (e.g. Durkin, 2002; Howitt, 2008; Jenkins, 1998). Historically, the primary assumption was that the sexual solicitation of children occurred face-to-face. However, with the advent of communication technologies, people began to realize the internet's role in child solicitation. In an effort to combat this mode of child luring, a concerned citizen created P-J, an organization that seeks to identify and incriminate online predators (OPs). Members of this organization (PJMs) wait in online spaces for OPs to approach them. Then PJMs communicate as if they are minors to gather incriminating evidence against the OPs. PJMs and OPs have incompatible goals for their interactions. OPs' aim to foster a sexual relationship with a minor without being punished for it. PJMs' aim to gather enough evidence against OPs to convict them and prevent the future luring of children. To accomplish these goals, PJMs and OPs communicate with each other and face unique dilemmas in doing so. The current dissertation employs Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis (AIDA; Tracy, 1995), a theory-method package that helps identify strategies used by interactants to address their institutionally based communicative dilemmas, to answer the research questions: 1) How do PJMs communicatively address their dilemma of encouraging online predators to pursue sexual contact without entrapping or making OPs suspicious, and 2) How do OPs communicatively address their dilemma of seducing their targets without getting caught or scaring off the presumed minor? By doing so, the project expands extant knowledge of grooming and computer-mediated self-presentation. It also extends the use of AIDA to contexts beyond organizations and formal institutions. Through the sampling and constant comparison procedure of 40 PJM-OP instant messenger transcripts provided by the organization's website, the researcher identified four overarching categories of strategies that PJMs used to manage their dilemma: Target Presentation, OP Safety, Sexual/Relational Contribution Management, and Bust Facilitation. The researcher also identified five overarching categories of strategies for OPs: Identity Establishment, Relationship Management, Safety Precautions, Sexual Communication Engagement, and Meet Facilitation. Within these categories are many strategies PJMs and OPs utilized in an effort to address their dilemmas of attaining their goals while avoiding risks. By identifying the aforementioned strategies, the researcher satisfied her primary goal of recognizing and understanding how PJMs and OPs attempt to reach their respective goals while avoiding risks. In addition to fulfilling this primary goal, the results of this project entail implications for several different lines of research. Specifically, the results of this dissertation extend research on traditional and online grooming, self-presentation online, and AIDA. The results also provide practical implications concerning what adolescents should be wary of when communicating with unknown others online. Additionally, the study has the capacity to help PJMs become more aware of OPs' strategies as well as their own. This awareness could help PJMs more efficiently train new PJMs and gain a deeper understanding of their interactions.

This study consists of qualitative interviews with 8 graduate students about the use of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC), or instant message (IM), programs in their interpersonal relationships. Participants were interviewed twice, once via an instant message program and once in a face-to-face setting. They were asked about their frequency of use, their use of multi-tasking, and the types of conversations they have via IM. Results of the interviews are discussed, with a concentration on the paradoxical nature of IM communication as impersonal, but at the same time, conducive to personal disclosure and intimacy.

This study examines style shift between formal and informal styles in first- encounter conversations between Japanese native speakers and demonstrates how the speakers shifted the speech style in the context. Many researchers have studied this type of style shift and demonstrated that style shifts occur within a single speech context where social factors, such as differences in age, status, and formalness remain constant (e.g., Cook, 2008; Geyer, 2008; Ikuta, 1983; Maynard, 1991; Okamoto, 1999). This study contributed support to these previous studies. In this study, both quantitative and qualitative analyses focusing on Japanese native speakers' use of style shifting in first-encounter conversations were conducted. The data came from four dyadic first-encounter conversations between Japanese female speakers. The conversations were audio-recorded in a room where the researcher was not present. After recording the four conversations, the researcher conducted follow-up interviews in person or by phone in order to check the validity of my analysis collected for this study. Overall, all the speakers shifted between formal and informal styles at least ten times, indicating that they did not speak exclusively in one style or the other in the current data. The frequency of style shifts varied depending on the speakers, but in each conversation, the older partners of the pairs shifted their speech style more frequently than the younger partners of the pairs. Furthermore, this study found six factors that accounted for style shifts between the formal and informal. When (1) introducing a new topic and (2) closing a topic, speakers shifted from informal to formal style. This signaled the opening of a new topic directly to the addressee. On the other hand, they shifted from formal style to informal style when (1) expressing feelings, (2) using self-directed utterances, (3) asking questions for confirmation or inference, and (4) adjusting to the context (formality and/or deference). The follow-up interviews revealed that the factors referred to as (1) expression of feelings, (2) self-directed utterances, and (3) questions for confirmation or inference were used by some speakers unconsciously. The self- directed utterances of factor (2) were divided into three types: soliloquy-like remarks, asking oneself a question, and recalling something. Factor (4) adjusting to the context (formality and/or deference), formal style was used to show politeness toward the addressee, and informal style was used to show friendliness, casualness, or empathy. Friendliness, casualness, or empathy was conveyed by use of informal style when the speakers' utterances brought laughter to the context and/or when the speakers showed empathy for the addressee.

This study investigated cultural differences, U.S.A. and Japan, in the selection of compliance-gaining strategies by lower status people as differentiated from a group leader in a short-term, task-oriented relationship. The subjects for this study consisted of 114 (59 male and 55 female) U.S. college students and 165 (65 male and 100 female} Japanese college students. All subjects lived in Oregon. After the subjects read the hypothetical scenario which involved changing a task for a classroom project, a 21 item questionnaire was administered. The questions were taken from Kipnis, Schmidt, and Wilkinson's (1980} study, and a six-point scale was used. The 21 questions were categorized into four compliance-gaining strategies: rationalization, exchange of benefits, ingratiation, and assertion. Rationalization and exchange of benefits were used to test hypotheses regarding culture as a whole. Hypothesis one was "Japanese lower status people who are in short-term, task-oriented relationships will use more rationalization compliance-gaining strategies than U.S. people who are in short-term, task-oriented relationships," while hypothesis two was "U.S. lower status people who are in short-term, task-oriented relationships will use more exchange of benefits compliance-gaining strategies than Japanese lower status people who are in short-term, task-oriented relationships." Ingratiation and assertion were used to test the hypotheses regarding gender in different cultures. Hypothesis three was "U.S. lower status females who are in short-term, task-oriented relationships will use more ingratiation compliance-gaining strategies than Japanese lower status females who are in short-term, task-oriented relationships," and hypothesis four was "U.S. lower status males who are in short-term, task-oriented relationships use more assertion compliance-gaining strategies than Japanese lower status males who are in short-term, task-oriented relationships."

Children placed in foster care are the most at-risk youth group in the U.S., often experiencing negative events and outcomes before, during, and after foster care. Despite the availability of statistical data centered on (former) foster children, little is known about how these individuals make sense of their often negative and rupture-laden experiences. One way that individuals make sense of rupture in life is through narratives. Narratives are important to examine because they allow for better understanding of the experience(s) and what experiences mean to those who have lived through them. Specifically, narratives might also illuminate differences in (former) foster children's emergence from foster care as resilient, or with wellbeing intact. Thus, this study aimed to explore adult, former foster children's narrative sensemaking and whether types of stories told correlate with narrator participants' (self-reported) resilience scores. Using mixed methods, I employed narrative thematic analysis to qualitatively analyze narrative interviews, looking at how participants made sense of rupture experiences. Independent coders conducted a content analysis, coding each story as one of the four emergent types, to allow for quantitative comparisons. A Kruskal-Wallis test revealed that resilience scores differed significantly among story types. Follow-up tests determined that narrators of Thriving after Rupture, in which narrators achieved personally because of foster care-related experiences, and Transformation for Self and Others, in which narrators both achieved personally and assisted others because of past rupture experiences, displayed significantly higher resilience than did narrators of Ongoing Rupture, which framed narrators as stuck in rupture and sensemaking cycles. Narrators of Helping Others and Giving Back, who talked about assisting others in the foster care system because of their own experiences, also trended toward displaying greater resilience than Ongoing Rupture. These results indicate that framing might be as important to wellbeing as lived experiences. Thus, it is important to continue to explore narrative therapy as a means to bolster (former) foster children's resilience.