The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to extend our understanding of nonverbal immediacy by examining how two student traits, emotional intelligence and emotional contagion, moderate the positive association between instructors' nonverbal immediacy cues and students' affective learning and (2) to further explain why nonverbal immediacy cues enhance, and at times, differentially impact student affect. Participants included 305 college students who completed measures assessing their instructor's immediacy cues, their affect for the course and their instructor, and two self-reports which measured their emotional intelligence and contagion.
Collectively, the results extend instructional communication theory by identifying emotional intelligence and emotional contagion as two key constructs that may transfer over well from psychology to instructional communication. While hierarchical regression analyses showed no significant interaction effects for emotional intelligence or contagion, the results suggest that emotional intelligence was a significant predictor of affect for instructor after controlling for instructor nonverbal immediacy cues. If these results suggest that students have different thresholds for affect, researchers could conclude that students with high levels of emotional intelligence may be more likely to experience affect for instructor than students with low levels of emotional intelligence, regardless of how immediate their instructors are. Further examination of the role of other student characteristics as potential moderators of the association between instructors' nonverbal immediacy cues and students' affective learning may begin to shed more light on our understanding of why nonverbal immediacy cues enhance student affect.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TCU/oai:etd.tcu.edu:etd-05122009-131927 |
| Date | 12 May 2009 |
| Creators | Wang, Tiffany Rose |
| Contributors | David P Schrodt |
| Publisher | Texas Christian University |
| Source Sets | Texas Christian University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/msword |
| Source | http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-05122009-131927/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to TCU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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