ABSTRACT
Perceptions of immediacy, or physical and psychological closeness, are affected not only by a person’s nonverbal behaviors but also by an individual’s verbal behaviors. As a content-analytic approach, this procedure assesses the attitudes of the speaker and the degree of like or dislike the speaker associates with another. Assessments of verbal immediacy typically include students’ perceptions of their teacher’s verbal behaviors or teachers’ self-reports of their own behaviors. The 17-item measure of verbal immediacy has demonstrated consistently high reliability. Verbal immediacy behaviors have been found to correlate positively and significantly with affective learning (and behavioral commitment) and cognitive learning but negatively with learning loss. Research on immediacy in the classroom should rely on assessments of both verbal and nonverbal immediacy.
