THE CONTRIBUTION OF KINESIC ILLUSTRATORS TOWARD THE COMPREHENSION OF VERBAL BEHAVIOR WITHIN UTTERANCES

The study assessed the extent to which a speaker's visible body movements can improve verbal comprehension for listeners. Subjects responded to multiple-choice items designed to test their comprehension of 12 videotaped spoken utterances which had been obtained by asking speakers to describe either objects in motion (e.g., a tennis ball, a car, spraying water) or abstract concepts. The 60 subjects each responded to stimuli in one of three presentation conditions (audiovisual, audiovisual without lip and facial cues, and audio-alone) over four signal-to-noise ratios. The results indicated that: (1) visual cues can at times significantly improve comprehension scores, even with lip and facial cues not present; (2) visual cues are increasingly useful as noise is introduced; (3) visual cues assist the comprehension of certain grammatical types of verbal segments regardless of semantic content expressed in those type segments.     

ANALYZING NEGOTIATION TACTICS: DEVELOPMENT OF A NEGOTIATION INTERACT SYSTEM

This research has three main objectives: to formulate a set of negotiation tactics based on a qualitative examination of bargaining interaction and prior research, to develop an interact system to code negotiation interaction based on these tactics, and to test the extent to which relative tactical use could be used to determine winners and losers in the negotiation. Three types of tactics were developed: attacking, defending, and regressing. The tactics were further divided into those that cued or constrained the next utterance, and those that responded to the prior utterance. Thus, each utterance was coded twice—as a response and as a cue. The structure of relative tactical use significantly predicted the outcome of experimental negotiations. In addition, it was demonstrated that when the structure of relative tactical use was displayed visually, the researcher could gain a clear picture of the exchange process in the negotiation.     

People Caught in Changing Career Opportunities: A Counseling Process

The article describes a counseling process to assist people who are caught in career changes. The process acknowledges the effect of changing labor market opportunities on the career decision making process.     

Values and Ethics in Family Therapy

This article is an introduction to this special issue on values and ethical issues in family therapy. The author discusses the historical context for the rising interest in these issues in family therapy, describes the rationale for this special issue, and presents a framework for analyzing the core values of the prominent models of family therapy. The ethical debate over use of paradoxical techniques in family therapy is used as an illustration of a values clash between different models of family therapy.     

Toward A Holistic Psychology of Valuing

Recent trends in moral development theory, especially those proposed by Kohlberg, point in the direction of a holistic approach. Intuitive modes are now more appreciated, as is the perspective religious experience gives. Because cognitive-developmentalism seems stretched beyond its limits, Dabrowski's theory of cognitive disintegration is proposed as having the potential (a) to meet the need for a holistic theory, and (b) to penetrate the sources of value objectivity.     

Meaning and Method in the Social Sciences<Superscript>1</Superscript>

Academia’s mathematical metaphysics are briefly explored en route to an elaboration of the qualitatively rigorous requirements underpinning the calibration and unambiguous interpretation of quantitative instrumentation in any science. Of particular interest are Gadamer’s emphases on number as the paradigm of the noetic, on the role of play in interpretation, and on Hegel’s sense of method as the activity of the thing itself that thought experiences. These point toward and overlap with (1) Latour’s study of the metrological social networks through which technological phenomena are brought into language as modes of being that can be understood, and (2) the way that Rasch’s models for measurement comprise a potential beginning for metaphysically astute, qualitatively and quantitatively integrated, mathematical methods in the social sciences. The paper closes with observations on the general problem that is philosophy, the need to remain open to multiplicities of meaning even as clear understandings are sought and obtained.