Communication Studies

This study attempts to provide further validity evidence for a scale that measures the tendency to enact active-empathic listening (AEL), one type of listening noted as especially important in close relationships and associated contexts like supportive episodes. In particular, we investigated the degree to which AEL is empirically related to various general social skills that reflect interaction competencies such as emotional sensitivity. Strong correlations between a measure of AEL and four of the six social skill dimensions measured by the social skills inventory (SSI) provide validity evidence for this scale. The paper concludes with a discussion of future research possibilities.

This study investigated the influence of sensory-processing sensitivity on communication apprehension scores and self-reported stress levels of college students (N = 304). Two path models detailing relations among the variables were compared and findings were threefold. First, as self-report sensory-processing sensitivity increased so did self-reported communication apprehension. Second, as sensory-processing sensitivity increased so did perceived college stress, most noticeably academic stress. Third, sensory-processing sensitivity accounted for a greater amount of variance in self-reported stress than communication apprehension. Implications for future research regarding the impacts of sensory-processing sensitivity on communication are discussed.

Supportive listening is recognized as an important element of supportive interactions, yet there is little research on the specific behaviors and characteristics of supportive listeners. Moreover, the terms supportive person and supportive listener are used interchangeably. This study sought 1) to investigate how supportive people and supportive listeners are described and 2) to assess similarities and differences among these categories. To answer our research questions, one group (n = 206) described unsupportive/supportive persons, and a second group (n = 211) described unsupportive/supportive listeners. Thought units from these data were then categorized and compared for similarities between these two types of supportive individuals. Results indicate supportive individuals, both listeners and persons, were described similarly, though several notable differences were identified. In general, the label supportive listening may be best described as a set of behavioral responses, whereas the term supportive person seems to represent a broader, overarching cognitive category used to organize various behaviors which include listening.

260 words Places are spaces that humans have bound, ordered, and defined by communication. Such representations are culturally situated and inherently involved in the production of legitimate knowledge. Place representations slice space into pictures of the world that simultaneously flatten and deepen space within public discourse. Flattened space is the bounded site where place is displayed as generalizable, accessible, calculable, and isometric. Deepened space displays the experience of place through artistic or poetic accounts. Whereas flattened representation of place removes the subject to accurately replicate the reality of place, deepened representation of place focuses on active participation of the experiencing subject in place. Conflict arises when groups must reconcile a site's simultaneously deepened and flattened representations. Thus, attending to how place is represented in various natural resource management (NRM) decision contexts is critical to the potential success of NRM. Since managers and decision makers cannot fully control the representation of place, they need to understand how place representation connects meaning and language to culture via practices of everyday life. We offer a cultural inventory as a tool that can facilitate development of such an understanding. The cultural inventory emerged from informant-directed interviews with landowners, recreationalists, civic leaders, and agriculturalists along the Yellowstone River. After interviewing resource users, we analyzed interview transcripts to discover how these residents represented their place, focusing on 1 discursive frames that flattened and deepened it. Our analysis suggests how a hermeneutics of place representation provides NRM advisors, planners and other decision makers with a conceptual framework that may help them integrate divergent place representations into decision contexts, leading to more effective management.

We analyze perspectives on watershed governance articulated by community leaders along the Yellowstone River (Montana, U. S. A.). These leaders framed watershed governance as a process of negotiating tensions between individual rights and equality for all, embracing diverse viewpoints while achieving broad policy agreement, and acknowledging the constant presence of change. We conducted informant directed interviews and used the theoretical perspective of Mouffe's democratic paradox to analyze the resulting discourse. Their discourse indicated a belief that negotiating tensions between individual liberty and group sovereignty was simultaneously obligatory and difficult. These civic officials struggled to develop a pluralistic democracy that could legitimize heterogeneous perspectives of watershed residents. Their version of pluralistic democracy offers one model for negotiating the democratic paradox that may be especially useful in environmental conflicts where property and other individual rights vie with egalitarian access to shared resources. Their leadership struggles offer lessons regarding ways to position all citizens who wish to effect change through participation in the democratic process.

Places are spaces that humans have bound, ordered, and defined by communication. Such representations are culturally situated and inherently involved in the production of legitimate knowledge. Place representations slice space into pictures of the world that simultaneously flatten and deepen space within public discourse. Flattened space is the bounded site where place is displayed as generalizable, accessible, calculable, and isometric. Deepened space displays the experience of place through artistic or poetic accounts. Whereas flattened representation of place removes the subject to accurately replicate the reality of place, deepened representation of place focuses on active participation of the experiencing subject in place. Conflict arises when groups must reconcile a site's simultaneously deepened and flattened representations. Thus, attending to how place is represented in various natural resource management (NRM) decision contexts is critical to the potential success of NRM. Since managers and decision makers cannot fully control the representation of place, they need to understand how place representation connects meaning and language to culture via practices of everyday life. We offer a cultural inventory as a tool that can facilitate development of such an understanding. The cultural inventory emerged from informant-directed interviews with landowners, recreationalists, civic leaders, and agriculturalists along the Yellowstone River. After interviewing resource users, we analyzed interview transcripts to discover how these residents represented their place, focusing on 1 discursive frames that flattened and deepened it. Our analysis suggests how a hermeneutics of place representation provides NRM advisors, planners and other decision makers with a conceptual framework that may help them integrate divergent place representations into decision contexts, leading to more effective management.

Conservation policy sits at the nexus of natural science and politics. On the one hand, conservation biologists strive to maintain scientific credibility by emphasizing that their research findings are the result of disinterested observations of reality. On the other hand, conservation biologists are committed to conservation even if they do not advocate a particular policy. The professional conservation literature has offered guidance on negotiating the relationship between scientific objectivity and political advocacy without damaging conservation biology's credibility. The value of this guidance, however, may be restricted by limited recognition of credibility's multidimensionality and emergent nature: it emerges through perceptions of expertise, goodwill, and trustworthiness. We used content analysis of conservation biology literature to determine how it framed credibility as related to apparent contradictions between science and advocacy. The literature typically framed...

The credibility enjoyed by natural science and scientists during most of the 20th Century has been challenged in the 21st Century. Philosophers of science have noted waning trust in science as an appropriate foundation for socio-political decisions (Haack, 2012). We propose a preliminary critical review of professional conservation literature that defines trust, explains its emergence, and acknowledges benefits and risks associated with trust. Second, we explore how trust and credibility interact to enhance or detract from scientific legitimacy.

Increased penetration of low-carbon energy technologies, such as wind and solar, into the U.S. energy system has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, facilitate transmission of energy to remote regions, and increase opportunities for public participation in energy system change. It also offers a window of opportunity to observe the social dynamics of rapid socio-technical system change. Studying internal, yet informal, communication among energy professionals enables communication researchers to probe processes and practices of identity composition, which may, in turn, suggest opportunities to shift the relationship between energy professionals and energy consumers away from alienation and toward consubstantiation. With this goal in mind, we analyzed communication among U.S. offshore wind professionals-specifically energy scientists and engineers-at professional conferences. Textual analysis of conference presentations and ethnographic interviews indicates that scientists and engineers working with the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry are composing an identity inspired by the frontier myth. We suggest that these evocations of the frontier myth might be strategically used to cultivate consubstantiality between technically-oriented energy professionals and publics. Awareness of a common connection to frontier myth may contribute to public engagement with offshore wind energy specifically, and more generally, with low-carbon energy technologies.

for their time and patience during the course of my program. I also thank the people of the Yellowstone River, the Yellowstone River Conservation District Council, and local Conservation District Administrators. A sincere appreciation to the following people: Susan who said, "Come to Montana and work on the Yellowstone River research project"; Tarla who said, "The Yellowstone River research data would be a great project as you pursue a Ph.D. at Texas A&M University"; my husband, Jimmy who said, "This is what you always wanted. Go get the Ph.D."; my mom, Mary Ann who said, "Get the Ph.D. before I am too old to help you with the children"; my daughter Judith Ann (then 9 years old), who said, "Mom, do what makes you happy"; my daughter Jessica Laine (then 4 years old), who asked, "Do you have your Ph.D.?" after I submitted my research paper to my professor at the end of my first semester at Texas A&M University; my friend Kasey who said numerous times, "Let the kids spend the night, so you can study"; my friend Angela who told me funny things to relieve my stress and called to visit so that I stayed awake on my commute to and from College Station; my friends Janae and Regina who transported my children to and from activities and surprised my family with homemade meals when I was in College Station; my Department Head at Tarleton State University, Dr. Charles Howard who said, "Anything is possible" as he adjusted my teaching schedule at Tarleton State University to accommodate my classes at Texas A&M University; all my colleagues, vi friends, and family that kindly asked about my progress in the Ph.D. program and would then patiently listen.

Students' emotional responses often provide valuable indicators of whether they are languishing or flourishing in their first-year classes, including introductory communication courses. Grading often exerts a strong influence on students' emotions. However, though students generally have positive moods after receiving high marks and negative ones when their grades are low, the intensity of these responses varies considerably. The current study examines whether Higgins' (2012) regulatory fit theory accounts for students' differing moods after receiving grades on introductory speech assignments. According to this perspective, prevention focus students use vigilance to avoid adverse outcomes. Thus, low evaluations provide a regulatory fit for prevention focus students by evoking feelings of alarm or distress that increase vigilance. Promotion focus students use eagerness to make gains progressively. High grades create a regulatory fit for promotion focus students by producing feelings of excitement that contribute to eagerness. When grading does not provide regulatory fit, prevention, and promotion focus, students will experience feelings of relief and discouragement. In the current study, each of these hypotheses was confirmed and support the principle that the fit between student regulatory focus and feedback sign explain student emotional responses to grading. These findings contribute to research and pedagogy in the introductory communication course.

Previous studies of grading as instructional feedback reveal contrary patterns of motivation among public speaking students. That is, in some cases students who received lower grades on their initial speech assignments made substantial improvements on their subsequent speeches. In other studies, scholars have reported the exact opposite finding. Inspired by Kluger and DeNisi's ([1996]. The effects of feedback interventions on performance: Historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 254-284) Feedback Intervention Theory, communication scholars have proposed that certain response biases called instructional feedback orientations contribute to these effects. A different explanation emerges from Higgins' ([2012]. Beyond pleasure and pain: How motivation works. New York: Oxford University) Regulatory Fit Theory, which states that the degree of fit between grades and regulatory focus engenders student engagement. The current study examines these differing explanations for the effort that students intend to exert on future speech assignments after receiving grades on preceding ones. Undergraduates (N = 240) enrolled in basic communication courses completed procedures to induce prevention and promotion regulatory focus and then gave responses to receiving higher or lower grades on classroom public speeches. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses provided support for both the Regulatory Fit Theory and instructional feedback orientations perspectives. Recommendations for future research and pedagogical practices are described, including framing instructional feedback to align with student regulatory focus.