Journalists and public relations practitioners in South Florida and metropolitan New York were surveyed regarding their perceptions and cross-perceptions of their own and each other's news values and influence of public relations on the news. The two groups report similar news values, although journalists report a greater lack of awareness of the similarity. The study also found that practitioners, expecting contributions of social good by public relations, perceive greater public relations' influence on news content than do journalists.

McCuire's inoculation theory employs an analogy to predict the effectiveness of defenses in inducing resistance to persuasion. In discussing this analogy, McGuire states that it is necessary to use beliefs which have not been attacked previously. Many studies have used inoculation theory to predict resistance with beliefs which have been attacked.We argue that McGuire is incorrect in his interpretation of the analogy and discuss an experimental test of different defenses' effectiveness over three belief levels.

Fifty-one subjects representing diverse laryngeal etiologies recorded /a/ and /i/ to provide a study sample of 102 vowel sounds. Listeners categorized each vowel on the basis of four voice types (normal, breathy, hoarse, unclassified) and evaluated the degree of vocal abnormality on a 7-point scale. In addition to spectrographic noise (SN) classification, several acoustic measures based on period variability were entered into a nmltiple regression analysis for the prediction of vocal severity across and within voice types. In general, spectrographic noise and curvilinear derivatives of the period standard deviation (PSD) provided the best predictions of disorder severity. Different variables were the major predictors for different voice types. Several variables used in previous studies were inefficient as predictors of severity.

This experiment investigated the conditions that facilitate judgment of an argument's validity. One hundred and twenty high-and low-dogmatic subjects were matched by group for reasoning ability and randomized to positive-and negative-source conditions. Each subject judged the logical validity of 16 syllogisms which were counterbalanced on the basis of a pretest. Two hypotheses were tested: (a) when syllogisms are attributed to positive and negative sources, low dogmatics will make a significantly greater number of accurate judgments of validity than will high dogmatics; and (6) high dogmatics will make more accurate judgments of validity under conditions of positive sources and valid syllogisms and under conditions of negative sources and invalid syllogisms. Conversely, low dogmatics will be more accurate under conditions of positive sources and invalid syllogisms and under conditions of negative sources and valid syllogisms. A four-factor analysis of variance indicated support for both hypotheses. The results are discussed as consistent with Rokeach's dogmatism theory. In addition, the effect of certain syllogistic forms on the judgmental ability of high-and low-dogmatic subjects is considered.A number of prior studies (McGuire, 1960; Miller, 1969) have investigated variables that may potentially affect judgments of an argument's logical validity. The present study manipulated the attitude toward argumentative content of persons making the judgments, the credibility of sources to whom the arguments were attributed, and the cognitive style variable of dogmatism in order to determine their effects on the judgmental process.