Formative Communication Experiences and Message Production Ability in Adulthood: Family Communication Patterns and Creative Facility

Abstract

Everyday experience suggests that there are individuals who are “glib,” who are “quick-witted,” and who can “think on their feet.” This ability to formulate fluent, novel messages has been termed creative facility, and previous research has identified various personality trait and information processing correlates of the phenomenon. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether formative communication experiences (i.e., family communication patterns) might be related to creative facility in a sample of young adults. The results indicated that people reporting a high family conformity orientation tended to be less fluent in formulating simple novel narratives and, further, that this effect was heightened under more cognitively demanding encoding conditions. Family conversation orientation did not have an effect on message fluency.

Keywords:

• Communication Skill
• Creative Facility
• Family Communication Patterns
• Message Production

Notes

Notes

Four additional subjects were excluded from the data analysis because they were not native English speakers, and, following standard practice in dealing with timed responses (see Bargh & Chartrand, 2000), two other participants were dropped from the analysis because their mean message production time for one or more of the three trial types was more than three standard deviations above the mean. Problems with the audio recordings for two additional subjects precluded analysis of their narrative production time data.

As a parallel, consider the decades-long research effort devoted to unraveling the mechanisms that give rise to communication apprehension, a similarly intuitively resonant message production phenomenon.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John O. Greene

John O. Greene (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1983) is a Professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University.

Melanie Morgan

Melanie Morgan (PhD, University of Kansas, 1998) is an Associate Professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University.

Lindsey B. Anderson

Lindsey B. Anderson (MA, Indiana University –Purdue University, Indianapolis, 2010) is a doctoral candidate in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. Elizabeth Gill (PhD, Purdue University, 2007) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Eastern Illinois University.

Elizabeth Gill

Elizabeth Dorrance Hall (MA, College of Charleston, 2011) is a doctoral candidate in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University.

Elizabeth Dorrance Hall

Brenda L. Berkelaar (PhD, Purdue University, 2010) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.

Brenda L. Berkelaar

Lauren E. Herbers (MA, Purdue University, 2012) is employed in the business sector.

Lauren E. Herbers

LaReina Hingson (JD, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, 2009) is a doctoral candidate in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University.