Exam 3: Family Communication, Conflict, and Forgiveness

Understanding the continuum of _________ is essential to the Family Systems framework, for they serve the purpose of affecting the flow of information within the system.

________ relationships are sexual relationships between people to whom marriage is prohibited, such as a father and a daughter, or culturally frowned upon, such as between a stepfather and a stepdaughter.

The areas of marital conflict mentioned most tend to center around what?

Every family has similar values and contexts that dictate how they communicate about sex, health issues, salaries, bills, or a family member who is deceased.

The physical gestures and movements that convey our emotions are most often referred to as nonverbal communication, or ________.

What notion is at the forefront of the General System Theory (GST)?

Every couple fights.

Professors and researchers of communication studies, Lynn Turner and Richard West summarize the general concepts of communication into four headings. Which of them focuses on the dynamic and ever-changing nature of communication?

Compare and contrast relational messages and nonrelational messages.

What is communication?

Researchers have found that those couples who are not in distress show less effective verbal communication styles in their day-to-day communication efforts than do those couples engaged in marital therapy and those couples divorcing.

The core assumptions of this family framework hold that every part of the system is interconnected, and that we can only understand by viewing the whole.

Sometimes our communication efforts are ineffective or they fail. When this happens, couples and families experience ________, or instances of stress or disagreements.

According to the Symbolic Interaction Theory, people react based on the meanings they find in any given situation.

Define "reflective listening" and give an example of conversation utilizing this skill.

________ are experienced as love, pleasure, and affection. These messages are conveyed through prolonged eye contact, closer proximity to one another, blushing, increased/prolonged touch, smiling, and laughing.

The Symbolic Interaction approach to examining family life and family communication revolves around the notion that human behavior is a continuous ________ where people watch the behaviors of people and then react to these behaviors.

Please define Neutral Emotional Messages. What are some of the pitfalls of these messages?

There are communication _________ that govern what family members can and cannot discuss or share and how they are to interact with their own family members.

While in the midst of a heated argument it might be difficult to think that any good can come out of it; however, ________ serves to build relationships and foster loyalty, commitment, and intimacy.