Academic Mentoring Relationship Communication Processes and Participant-Reported Effectiveness.

The current study attempted to broaden our understanding of communication processes that occur in academic mentoring relationships. Using the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) program, it was found that mentors and proté gés would mirror one another's communications. Moreover, mentors and protégés reacted differently in regards to their perceptions of what occurred during the course of the relationship relative to the different communication indicators. For example, mentor and proté gé emotion-related communications were important for protégés, whereas cognitive-related communications were important for mentors. Assent communications were positively perceived by proté gés, whereas they were negatively perceived by mentors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]