Rhetoritherapy Versus The Medical Model: Dealing With Reticence

High communication apprehensives talk about communication apprehension and its effects on their behavior

“…Behavior (speaking) is the point of focus, rather than attitudes (feelings about speaking) (cf. Phillips, 1968Phillips, , 1977Phillips & Metzger, 1973). In contradistinction, researchers on CA, especially McCroskey (1970McCroskey ( , 1977McCroskey ( , 1978McCroskey ( , 1981, focus on attitudes.…”

An examination of the impact of performance visualization

“…Rhetoritherapy (Phillips, 1977) presumes that the underlying cause of PSA is inadequate skills, SD (Wolpe, 1958) presumes that people have associated aversive consequences with public speaking through reinforcement processes, cognitive restructuring (Meichenbaum, 1985) presumes that people's irrational thoughts are the source of PSA, and visualization (Assagioli, 1973(Assagioli, ,1976 presumes that the way people envision themselves as public speakers is the source of their PSA. To date, all of these presumptions have been examined empirically except the one associated with visualization.…”

“…One prominent intervention, systematic desensitization (SD, Wolpe, 1958), is used to help people associate relaxed states rattier than anxious states with public speaking. Taking a different tack, Phillips (1968) constructed a skills based intervention that he called rhetoritherapy (Phillips, 1977) to enhance public speaking competence. Another line of work trains people to change the way they think about public speaking (Ellis, 1962).…”

The effects of skills training on communication satisfaction and communication anxiety in the basic speech course

“…Several techniques for treating communication apprehension include rhetoritherapy skills (Kelly, 1989;Phillips, 1977) and cognitive restructuring (Fremouw & Scott, 1979) however, no one treatment has been shown to work on all apprehensive individuals and the problem manifests itself in a lack of communication skills (Dwyer, 2000;Kelly & Keaton, 2000). Although some researchers claim communication apprehension is genetic (Beatty & McCroskey, 2000;Beatty & Valencic, 2000;Condit, 2000) many excessively apprehensive individuals have reduced their anxiety with training (i.e., Kelly, Duran & Stewart, 1990;Kelly & Keaton, 2000).…”