Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the perceived interpersonal proximity on the verbal activity in a non-face-to-face dyadic conversation.
The Subjects were 48 female nursing school students. We had instituted a near-sociometric questionnaire measuring the members' contact level in school life. According to this, the subjects were divided into 3 groups: MRHC (two persons recognized mutally to keep high contact with each other), MRLC (two persons recognized mutu ally to keep low contact with each other), and OC (Oneside choice: one partner recognized to keep high contact with the other, but the latter didn't recognize so. The former was the chooser (C), the latter was the chosen (C)). Each group had eight dyads. The Ss were briefly introduced to one another and told that they should have the two kinds of conversation, which were about a high interesting topic and a low interesting one. The two conversations were made successively in a day, each lasting for 18 minutes. After each speechsession, the Ss were asked to provide personality perception ratings about their partners.
The verbal activity indices employed in this study were 4 as a temporally zero-state sequence and some one-or-two-state indices.
The results showed that the higher the level of the perceived interpersonal proximity the more lively the verbal cooperative activity. The verbal activity level of OC declined in the course of the conversation, but the other two groups kept initial level of verbal activity. It was shown that the interrelation of individual verbal activity in general was C (OC) >MRHC>MRLC>C (OC). The difference of amounts of speech between the two speakers' in OC was the largest among the three groups, and this disparity increased with the passage of conversation.
From these results, it was shown that the overall vebal activity had a positive correlation with the level of interpersonal proximity and the stability of speech corresponded to the partners' agreement on the perception about their interpersonal proximity. It was found that the presence of discrepancy in the partners' perception of interpersonal proximity tended to facilitate the “dissociative”, process of speech in dyad.
Furthermore, there was a significantly positive correlation between the degree to which the Ss are interested in the topics and the verbal cooperative activity.
Concerning the overall personality perception rating, the trend of friendliness and intimacy increased with the passage of conversation, in particullar this trend was remarkable in MRLC group, in which two persons were most unfamiliar with each other among the three groups.
It was concluded from these findings that when the Ss' interpersonal proximity had the potency of active conversation and that it lead to the different sensitivity to a situational factor as conversation topics.
