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Role negotiation in stepfamilies is an important process that involves and affects all family members. Although researchers have focused on stepparent role development and the influence of stepparents' behaviors, less [...]

Research on media effects has documented the media's influence on beliefs and behavior while cross-cultural psychology has documented the effects of the language used in communication on identification with the ingroup and the outgroup. Media usage in the outgroup language should, therefore, affect identification patterns. This research investigates media effects in the acculturation process through a longitudinal design involving minority and majority group members evolving in the same bilingual environment. Subjects were Francophone students (N = 235) from minority and majority settings attending a bilingual (French-English) university. Results revealed that majority students increased significantly written and public media consumption in English whereas minority students increased French written media consumption. Furthermore, increased usage of English written and audiovisual media was related to identity changes in favour of the Anglophone group. Finally, path analysis emphasized the mediating role played by English language confidence and the determining role of ethnolinguistic vitality.

Television producers, across all types of programming, assume young viewers can parallel process simultaneously presented messages. For instance, television news producers appear to believe that young viewers can attend to weather icons, lexical news crawls, and sports scores while they also attend to news anchors who present the news. Nonetheless, attention theory suggests parallel processing on this scale cannot be executed efficiently. Given the format's popularity, perhaps those messages take advantage of perceptual grouping, as described by Treisman, Kahneman, and Burkell (1983). Perceptual grouping describes a process where separate but semantically related messages are attended to simultaneously with minimal effort. Using secondary task methodology, we measured participants' attentional capacity while they watched an example of this format: CNN's Headline News. In addition to this visually complex condition, we created a visually simple condition by deleting graphics and news crawls. Participants in this latter condition attended to both the auditory and visual channels, thus retaining story facts conveyed by both channels. Participants in the complex condition, however, shifted attention to the auditory channel. Ten percent of the factual information contained in news stories was lost to participants. It appears that this multimessage format exceeded viewers' attentional capacity. In conclusion, we discuss the implications for attention theory.

Ersatz social engagement theory (Green & Brock, 1998, 2003) suggests that individuals may be drawn to mediated interactions because of their ease, lack of risk, and immediate gratification, but that these interactions may be less rewarding over the long term. In Study 1 (N = 42), participants' moods were measured before and after engaging in a conversation with a stranger either online (instant messenger) or face to face. Participants became slightly less tense and less angry regardless of which condition they were in, but significantly happier when they were in the instant messenger (IM) condition. The increased happiness after an IM rather than face-to-face conversation was especially pronounced among women. Study 2 (N = 101) was a survey of students' Internet use and other extracurricular activities. Students did not appear to be substituting Internet use for other forms of extracurricular engagement. However, IM use was associated with feeling that one used the Internet too much, and reduced life satisfaction.

This report is the second in a series of investigations designed to develop a working model identifying the effects of trade-offs between selected conversational maxims on public attitudes toward augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) system users and their communication. In the current study, tradeoffs between the informativeness of a prestored message and its speed of delivery were examined. A total of 96 salesclerks participated. Sixteen scripted, videotaped conversational conditions, involving an AAC customer and a clerk at a checkout counter, were used to manipulate message informativeness and speed of message delivery. Following each assigned viewing, participants completed a questionnaire designed to assess their attitudes toward the AAC user and his or her communication. The conditions involving (a) the quickly delivered message with excessive information, (b) the slowly delivered message with adequate information preceded by a "floorholder," and (c) the slowly delivered message with adequate information without a floorholder were rated higher than (d) the quickly delivered message with inadequate information. There was no main effect for participant or AAC user gender. Implications regarding a model of conversational trade-offs and technological applications are discussed. KEY WORDS: augmentative and alternative communication, utterance-based computer systems, theory development, public attitudes, maxim violations, Historically, the use of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems has been characterized as a slow and frustrating method of communication (less than 15 words per minute) in which the [...]

This study examined the relationships between interpersonal communication motives and temperament traits. Results indicated that extroversion was positively correlated with pleasure, affection, inclusion, escape, and relaxation and was not correlated with control. Extroversion accounted for the most unique variance in the pleasure and relaxation motives. Neuroticism was positively correlated with inclusion, escape, and control, negatively correlated with pleasure, and not correlated with affection and relaxation. Neuroticism accounted for the most unique variance in the escape motive. Psychoticism was positively correlated with control, negatively correlated with pleasure, affection, inclusion, and relaxation, and uncorrelated with escape. Psychoticism accounted for the most unique variance in the interpersonal motives of affection and inclusion. KEY CONCEPTS interpersonal communication motives, communibiology, temperament

Objectives: To determine whether gay men and lesbians disclose their sexual orientation, and other sensitive behaviors to their primary care physicians; whether they have a chance of finding a gay friendly physician; and what factors are involved. Methods: A self-report questionnaire was administered to 66 gay men and 28 lesbians at a gay and lesbian community center. Results: Less than half of participants felt their health insurance plan gave them a choice of finding a lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) doctor. Those who did were more likely to be older, male, and to feel more comfortable discussing sex. Men were more likely to disclose their sexual orientation to their health care provider (HCP), to feel very comfortable discussing sex, to have a male doctor, to have a choice of finding a LGB provider through their insurance plan, and to think their provider is LGB. Those who disclosed their sexual orientation to their providers were more likely to be white males with male doctors, who felt their doctor was very gay friendly, and to have also discussed substance use, sexual behavior, and HIV with their HCP, and to feel comfortable discussing sex. Discussion: Lesbians in particular have difficulty disclosing their sexual orientation to providers, possibly due to continuing stigma, and to have less of a choice of finding a gay or lesbian provider. The data suggest that health insurance plans should provide patients with the opportunity to find gay friendly physicians, as it may facilitate communication about substance use, high risk sexual behavior and other health topics. KEYWORDS. Physicians, lesbians, gay men, sexual behavior, health insurance, doctor-patient relationship, homosexuality

Studies of a an employee personal narrative reveal that telecommunication empowers the homeworker by allowing greater involvement in economic opportunities, global finance, technology and the media. Findings are based upon interactions throughout the day of one homeworker as compared to those of a retired custodian, a business manager, the businesses' secretary and a media executive.

This investigation of face-to-face conversational behavior examined the strategies people employ to deal with the face- and interaction-threatening implications of argumentative behavior and explored the joint influence of individual differences in perceivers' interpersonal construct systems and message producers' communication strategies on the content and structure of impressions of message producers. In general, we found that the complexity of the perceiver's interpretive frame interacted with features of target behavior to affect both the meaning given to behavior and the organization of inferences about behavior in an impression.