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This study investigates the practice of "sounding for others," wherein one person vocalizes to enact someone else's putatively ongoing bodily sensation. We argue that it constitutes a collaborative way of performing sensorial experiences. Examples include producing cries with others' strain or pain and parents sounding an "mmm" of gustatory pleasure on their infant's behalf. Vocal sounds, their loudness, and duration are specifically deployed for instructing bodily experiences during novices' real-time performance of various activities, such as tasting food for the first time or straining during a Pilates exercise. Vocalizations that are indexically tied to the body provide immediate displays of understanding and empathy that may be explicated further through lexicon. The existence of this practice challenges the conceptualization of communication as a transfer of information from an individual agent -- even regarding assumedly individual body sensations -- instead providing evidence of the joint nature of action and supporting dialogic theories of communication, including when language-marginal vocalizations are used.

With the increasing complexity of the engineering role, today's graduates must be capable of confronting both technical and societal problems; underpinned by effective teamwork at their core. Problem-based learning has been implemented in engineering to better prepare students for modern industry. However, limited research has examined the complex social processes involved in PBL. The present study, therefore, reports on how students working in tutorless PBL groups -- owing to teaching limitations -- must effectively self-manage their team efforts if they are to succeed. This PBL arrangement involved a 'floating facilitator' but the analysis focuses exclusively on the students' tutorless interactions. The data collected is from 22 chemical engineering undergraduates in four groups, and consists of naturalistic video-recordings of 32 PBL meetings (35 h). This corpus was examined empirically using conversation analysis to elucidate students' recurrent communicational practices. The microanalyses showed how students continuously established PBL as the collective responsibility of the group. Furthermore, students maintained 'average', equal social identities, and used humour/self-deprecation in constructing an informal learning environment. In the absence of the tutor who would normally maintain cohesion, these strategies offer a means through which students adapt to the unfamiliarity of the tutorless setting, where no member is positioned as the substitute tutor.

Repetition has often been argued to be a semiotic device that iconically signifies 'more content', such as intensity and plurality. However, through multimodal interaction analysis of materials in English, Estonian, and Swedish, this paper demonstrates how self-repetition is used to coordinate actions across participants and temporally organize the ongoing activity. The data are taken from infant mealtimes, pilates classes, dance training, boardgames, rock climbing, and opera rehearsals. Repetition of both lexical and non-lexical tokens can prolong, postpone, and generally organize segments of action as well as co-create rhythms and moves in a moment-by-moment reflexive relationship with other (non-vocalizing) participants. A crucial feature of repetitions is that they can be flexibly extended to fit the other's public performance, its launching, continuation, and projectable completion. We argue that the iconicity of repetition emerges through its indexical relationship to other bodies, as a real-time jointly achieved phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a pedagogical approach that aims to develop students' group-working skills and to challenge their current knowledge, problem-based learning (PBL) provides a unique setting in which to examine disagreements in interaction. Previous research on disagreements in classrooms has typically examined tutor-student interaction or student-student interaction in which a tutor is present. This paper, however, examines tutorless PBL tutorials and focuses specifically on those moments in which knowledge claims are challenged by other students. The data comprise 30 h of video recordings from 24 chemical engineering PBL tutorials in a Scottish university. Conversation analysis was used to identify 101 disagreement formulations, many of which follow the format seen in other classroom settings (e.g. agreement-prefaced disagreements). A subset of disagreement formulations manage epistemic responsibility through invoking expert sources (e.g. tutor-provided worksheets and academically superior out-group members). Through invoking an expert source in this way, students attend to the pedagogical activities -- without tutor assistance -- while minimising the conversational trouble associated with the act of 'doing' disagreement (i.e. indirectly enacting disagreements whilst maintaining a neutral stance). This paper thus contributes to CA literature on disagreements, while providing a unique insight into PBL tutorial interaction. Directions for future research are suggested.

As mobile phone technology becomes more advanced, so too does its presence in everyday life. Research has shown, for instance, that students are using their mobile phones in classroom settings, a practice that holds both potential advantages and disadvantages. In group work, these interactions may have consequences for group dynamics in that orienting to a mobile phone can display a shift in an individual's attention to the group. The current essay details a research project conducted on problem-based learning (PBL) tutorials in the United Kingdom in which student groups were video-recorded as they worked. A discursive psychological analysis focused on instances of interaction in which a group member picked up his or her mobile phone in the middle of a working session and how the accountability for the phone use was managed by either the phone user or a fellow group member. In understanding more about the microprocesses that take place in such environments, we are better positioned to support students' learning and socialization as they progress through college.

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an internationally recognised pedagogical approach that is implemented within a number of disciplines. The relevance and uptake of PBL in psychology has to date, however, received very limited attention. The aim of this paper is therefore to review published accounts of how PBL is being used to deliver psychology curricula in higher education and to highlight psychological research that offers practical strategies for PBL theory and practice. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, we discuss the principles of PBL and provide examples of how it can be used within psychology curricula, alongside a consideration of its advantages and disadvantages. In the second section, we outline the results of a systematic literature review of published examples of PBL used within psychology undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Finally, in the third section, we examine some of the ways in which psychological research can provide practical guidance for PBL teaching practice. We conclude this paper with some recommendations for future research across all these areas, and call for the further development of PBL curricula in psychology higher education course provision.

Research has shown that educators may be reluctant to implement group work in their teaching due to concerns about students partaking in off-task behaviours. However, such off-task interactions have been shown to promote motivation, trust, and rapport-building. This paper details a study in which student groups were video recorded as they engaged in problem-based learning tutorials, with the aim of examining the social interaction within such settings. Eighty-five hours of data were collected from nine groups, with discursive psychology being used to analyse how group cohesion is constructed through off-topic talk such as gossiping and teasing. Two case studies are detailed in which we demonstrate how cohesion is established through a process of collective action against the "other": highlighting the differences between "us" and "them", and how this can impact on group dynamics. There is often a discrepancy between self-reported and observed behaviour in groups and so the more we know about what actually happens in such environments, the better placed we are to support student learning. The paper concludes with recommendations on how analyses of social interaction and the management of psychological issues in problem-based learning tutorials can inform the use of problem-based learning as a teaching and learning approach.

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2008.01130.x Byline: Judith Horne (1), Sally Wiggins (1) Keywords: suicide; discursive psychology; virtual identities; Internet forums Abstract: Abstract Those who attempt suicide have often been described as 'crying for help', and there are implications if such cries are not taken seriously. This paper examines how users of an Internet forum for 'suicidal thoughts' work up their authenticity in their opening posts, and how these are responded to by fellow forum users. Data were taken from two Internet forums on suicide over a period of one month and were analysed using discursive psychology. The analysis demonstrates that participants display their authenticity through four practices: narrative formatting, going 'beyond' depression, displaying rationality and not explicitly asking for help. Furthermore, both initial and subsequent posts worked up identities as being psychologically 'on the edge' of life and death. The analysis suggests that the forum in part works as a site for suicidal identities to be tested out, authenticated and validated by individuals. We conclude with some suggestions for the supportive work of suicide 'postvention'. Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Psychology, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow Article note: Address for correspondence: Judith Horne, Forth Valley College of Further and Higher Education, Kerse Road, Stirling, FK7 7QA, e-mail: judith.horne@forthvalley.ac.uk