Tag: Hoke M

Paige Amstutz, Annelise Helbling & Madison Hoke

Vocalic qualities of Disney villains

Animated Disney movies often try to remove the idea of race and bias from their character choices, but what about movies in which there are no human or live-action characters?  The following study explores whether the choices made by actors and directors show implicit bias against African American males through vocalics in nonhuman, animated Disney characters.  Researchers chose eleven Disney movies in which there were no human characters and analyzed the vocalics. Researchers measured pitch, rate of speech, and volume. The results were compared to past research in order to determine whether or not the vocalic qualities matched male African American speech.  The results were inconclusive as to whether implicit bias plays a role in vocalic choices made for Disney villains. However, the results determined that villains take on many vocalic characteristics of men and do not follow the average American vernacular speech.

COMM 430, Nonverbal Communication

Doyle Srader

L203

1:30 – 2 PM

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Madison Hoke

Interaction between intermediate missionaries’ and their host culture, and the missionaries perceived level of reverse culture shock.  

The following research explored the relationship between intermediate missionaries and their immersion into a host culture and their level of perceived reverse culture shock upon their arrival back to their home culture.  The participants of the study were 22 intermediate missionaries from the organizations of Village Schools International and the Navigators.  Each participant had to of participated in a mission trip abroad that lasted from two months to five years.  Researchers created the Immersion in the Host Culture Scale, which was a six-part open ended questionnaire to determine the amount of immersion a missionary took part in during their mission.  Researchers also used the Reentry Shock Scale that consists of sixteen-point true false statements that help record a missionary’s perceived level of reverse culture shock.  Researchers determined cultural immersion from decoding for six different themes: Curiosity, involvement, cooking, desire, contentment, and relational.  The results of this study theorized that there is a positive relationship between the amount of cultural immersion and perceived re-entry shock with intermediate missionaries.  Unfortunately, the limitations of the study prevent researchers from drawing definitive conclusions about a possible cause of re-entry shock.

COMM 499, Senior Capstone

Doyle Srader

L203

12:30 – 1 PM

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Jesse Gerlach & Madison Hoke

A Study on the Relation Between Nonverbal Knowledge and Touch Avoidance

The following study looked to compare the relationship between an individual’s knowledge of nonverbal cues and their level of touch avoidance.  The study was conducted online with a total of 33 participants.  Participants were asked to complete the Test of Nonverbal Cue Knowledge (TONCK) and Touch Avoidant Measure (TAM).  For the Touch Avoidant Measure, both section one and two were included, testing an individual’s level of touch avoidance in same-sex and opposite-sex social interactions. Prior to conducting the study, the experimenters examined the past research done in each of these areas.  The studies found that Touch Avoidance is more common with individuals who suffer from Social Anxiety (SA). In particular, SA was discovered to be most prominent with women who were being approached by men they did not originally know. Therefore, the researchers wanted to focus on touch avoidance within the same-sex and opposite-sex spectrum. This was designed so that a thorough understanding of which instances people may feel Touch Avoidant, and whether or not their knowledge of nonverbals is attributed to that avoidance may be reached. The results of the research found that there was little to no correlation between an individual’s knowledge of nonverbal cues, and their level of touch avoidance with both people of the same and opposite sex. Limitations of the study are centered around both the small participant number and the absence of male and female categories for the results. Future research can, therefore, look into both other variables relating to Touch Avoidance and the implications of gender as they relate to Touch Avoidance.

COMM 413, Advanced Interpersonal Communication

Doyle Srader

10 AM – Noon

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