International Series in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 7: Language and Action: A Structural Model of Behaviour presents studies that tackle human action, relationship between key decisions and outcomes, and the forces that give shape to events. The book particularly focuses on the activity system of conversation.
The first chapter provides an introduction to and overview of the structural model of behavior. Chapter 2 reviews several experiments concerning conversation structure. Chapter 3 covers linguistic analogy, while Chapter 4 provides an overview of the structure of discourse. The fifth chapter discusses the theories and models of conversation structure. Chapter 6 tackles the human aspects, while Chapter 7 covers the applications. The eighth chapter presents the conclusion, which includes the evaluation of methods and theoretical issues.
The book will be of great interest psychologists, psychiatrists, and other scientists concerned with behavioral structure of conversation.