The purpose of the present report is to study the relationhip between the impressions of persons and verbal activity measured in a nonface-to-face triadic communication.
Female students were divided into H (high anxious) -M (middle anxious) -M, L (low anxious) - M-M, and M-M-M groups. Each group had five triads. The triadic communications were repeated twice at twoday intervals. In each session, subjects made impression ratings of two persons in triads by means of 30 paired-adjective list. The verbal activity indices employed in this study were 4 indices as a zero-state sequence (Common Silence, Only One Talking, Double Talking, and Common Talking) and 8 indices as a one-or two-state sequence. Principle factor analysis was applied to the impression rating data. Then, six factors were obtained as follows : Cheerfulness, Social Activity, Attractiveness, Tolerance, Affability, and Dependability. The impression of L subject was affected Cheerfulness factor.
The verbal activity structure had nine factors. The main factors were three persons' cooperative activity, two persons' cooperative activity and individual activity. Concerning the activity as group, the tendency of general activity was H-M-M≥L-M-M>M-M-M and the verbal activity increased with the sessions of triadic communication. It was shown that the interrelation of verbal activity in general was H≅L>M.
Extreme high (or low) anxious person-middle anxious person interaction seems more active than two middle anxious persons interaction.
There were significant correlations between the impression rating and the verbal activity in triadic communication. In particular, the individual activity factor had strong correlation with some impression factors.
Furthermore, the fact that these impression factors differed from those in other studies suggests that the impression forming situation be analyzed in more detail.
The hypothesis of a U-shaped function between anxiety and verbal activity and the hypothesis of anxiety discrepancy-verbal activation were confirmed.
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