Introduction
The number one anxiety of adults in the United States is speaking before a group (Watson and Dodd, 1984). Among college students, this dread is secondary only to crawling on a mountainside ledge (Pelias, 1991), and its ramifications are not any more pleasant. Known as "communication apprehension" (CA), this phenomenon has been defined as "an individual's level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons" (McCroskey, 1976, 39; in press, 7).

Over 2000 years ago, the Greeks spoke of people who were reluctant to speak (Glenn, Dobkins, Kennan, and Cronin, 1989) and stage fright was addressed in the first public speaking books that appeared in the United States; however, studies that seriously researched these fears did not appear until the 1930's (McCroskey, in press). For the next thirty years, scholars related all studies in this field to stage fright. Anyone who suffered from stage fright was thought to 1) lack public speaking skills; 2) have prepared inadequately; or 3) not realize that public speaking was just talking to people (McCroskey, in press).