Download Spring 2012 Syllabus (Kelly Aune)

Message Processing
COMG670
Spring 2012
Course Description Message Processing 670 is a graduate-­‐level offering designed to acquaint graduate students of communicology with current theory and research on human message processing. Both verbal and nonverbal codes and media will be examined in detail. Topics included will be the nature of communication codes and media; schemata, scripts, and scenes; memory organization packets; symbolic and parallel distributed processing modes; processing awareness and control; inference-­‐generating; discourse comprehension; and expectancies and violations. Information processing demands and constraints associated with various encoding and decoding processes will be discussed. Current readings on message effects (e.g., affective responses, information retention and recall, attitudinal and behavioral influence) resulting from encoding and decoding processes will be surveyed. Assignments 1. Groups of students will conduct an empirical research study focusing on some aspect of message processing. Each graduate student will be assigned a team of undergraduates with whom they will conduct this project. The final product will be a paper suitable for conference paper or publication. The paper will be worth 60% of the final grade. 2. Pairs of students will lead a class discussion on a selected topic in message processing. Students are expected to summarize either the area of study or selected research within the domain, as well as raise pertinent questions of theory suggested by the research. Class presentation and materials worth 20% of final grade. 3. Course participation. Each student is expected to come prepared to participate in discussions of materials that make up our course content. Participation is worth 20% of the final grade. Schedule Week 1 Into to class; message processing definition of communication; Week 2 Definition of communicative codes; functions of communicative codes; properties of communicative codes Week 3 Definition of communicative codes; functions of communicative codes; properties of communicative codes Week 4 Definition of media; functions of media; properties of media; definition of message; properties of messages Week 5 Overview of linguistics; language acquisition Ellis, 1992 Week 6 Creating understanding; grounding; Brennan, 1998; Clark et al., Horton & Keysar, 1996 Week 7 Theory of implicature; cooperative principle; perspective-­‐taking Grice, 1975; 1989; Week 8 Theory of implicature; cooperative principle; perspective-­‐taking Shintel & Keysar, 2009; Week 9 Speech acts; inference-­‐making; face management and politeness theory Brown & Levinson, 1987; Fussell & Krauss; Hilton, 1995; Holtgraves, 1998 Aune, Levine, Park, Asada,& Banas, 2005; Week 10 Deception; relevance theory Sperber & Wilson, 1995 Week 11 Misunderstanding; conversational misalignment Schober, 2005 Week 12 Information and message processing theories; implicit and explicit processing; nonconscious processing Berry & Broadbent; Cacioppo & Petty; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Week 13 Conscious controlled vs. automatic processing; analytical vs. “mindless” processing; gestalt vs. heuristic processing Aune & Reynolds, 1994; Bargh, 1992; Bornstein, 1992 Week 14 Catching up Week 15 Catching up Week 16 Paper presentations Reading list and Bibliography of Relevant Literature Aune, R. K. (1998). A theory of attribution of responsibility for creating understanding. Annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Jerusalem, Israel. Aune, R. K., & Reynolds, R. A. (1994). The empirical development of the preferred processing scale. Communication Monographs 61, 135-­‐160. Aune, R. K., Levine, T. R., & Park, H. S. Asada, K. J. K.,& Banas, J.A. (2005). Tests of Theory of Communicative Responsibility. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 24(4), 358-­‐381. Bargh, J. A. (1992). Does Subliminality Matter to Social Psychology? Awareness of the Stimulus versus Awareness of its Influence. In R. F. Bornstein & T. S. Pittman, (Eds.), Perception without awareness (pp. 236-­‐255). New York, NY: Guilford. Berry, D. C., & Broadbent, D. E. (1984). On the relationship between task performance and associated verbalizable knowledge. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 36, 209-­‐231. Berry, D. C., & Broadbent, D. E. (1987). The combination of implicit and explicit learning processes. Psychological Research, 49, 7-­‐15. Berry, D. C., & Broadbent, D. E. (1988). Interactive tasks and the implicit-­‐explicit distinction. British Journal of Psychology, 79, 251-­‐272. Bornstein, R. F. (1992). Subliminal mere exposure effects. In R. F. Bornstein & T. S. Pittman (Eds.), Perception without awareness (pp. 191-­‐210). New York: Guilford Press. Brennan, S. E. (1998). The Grounding Problem in Conversations With and Through Computers. In S. R. Fussell & R. J. Kreuz (Eds.), Social and Cognitive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication (pp. 201-­‐225). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 116-­‐132. Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E., & Morris, K. J. (1983). Effects of need for cognition on message evaluation, recall, and persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 805-­‐818. Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Clark, H. H., & Brennan, S. E. (1991). Grounding in Communication. In L. Resnick, J.Levine & S. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (pp. 127-­‐149). Hyattsville, MD: American Psychological Association. Clark, H. H., & Wilkes-­‐Gibbs, D. (1986). Referring as a collaborative process. Cognition, 22(1), 1-­‐39. Ellis, D. G. (1992). Syntactic and pragmatic codes in communication. Communication Theory, 2, 1-­‐23. Fussell, S. R., & Krauss, R. M. (1989a). Understanding friends and strangers: The effects of audience design on message comprehension. European Journal of Social Psychology, 19(6), 509-­‐525. Fussell, S. R., & Krauss, R. M. (1989b). The effects of intended audience on message production and comprehension: Reference in a common ground framework. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 25(3), 203-­‐219. Fussell, S. R., & Krauss, R. M. (1992). Coordination of knowledge in communication: Effects of speakers' assumptions about what others know. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(3), 378-­‐391. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics. (Vol. 3). New York: Academic Press. Grice, H. P. (1989) Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hamblin, J. L., & Gibbs, R. W. (2003). Processing the meanings of what speakers say and implicate. Discourse Processes, 35, 59-­‐80. Hilton, D. J. (1995). The social context of reasoning: Conversational inference and rational judgment. Psychological Bulletin, 118, 248-­‐271. Hirst, G., McRoy, S., Heeman, P., Edmonds, P., & Horton, D. (1994). Repairing conversational misunderstandings and non-­‐understanding. Speech Communication, 15, 213-­‐229. Holtgraves, T. (1998). Interpersonal Foundations of Conversational Indirectness. In S. R. Fussell & R. J. Kreuz, (Eds.), Social and cognitive approaches to interpersonal communication (pp. 71-­‐89). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Horton, W., & Keysar, B. (1996). When do speakers take into account common ground? Department of Psychology, 59(1) 91-­‐117. Iacoboni, M. (2008). Mirroring people. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. McRoy, S. W., & Hirst, G. (1995). The repair of speech act misunderstandings by abductive inference. Computational Linguistics, 21, 435-­‐478. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-­‐Verlag. Schober, M. F. (2005). Conceptual alignment in conversation. In B. F. Malle & S. D. Hodges (Eds.), Other minds. New York: Guilford. Shintel, H., & Keysar, B. (2009). Less is more: A minimalist account of joint action in communication. Topics in Cognitive Science, (1), 260-­‐273. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance. Malden, Massachusetts; Blackwell. Tomasello, M. (2008). Origins of human communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wilkes-­‐Gibbs, D., & Clark, H. H. (1992). Coordinating beliefs in conversation. Journal of memory and language, 31(2), 183-­‐194.