Career Transitions for Dancers: A Counselor's Perspective

The author describes a counseling program designed to assist professional dancers in making the transition to a postperformance career.     

Licensure in the helping professions: anatomy of an issue

The licensing of psychologists is not generally a concern of counselors, counselor educators, or supervisors. However, with the enactment of new licensing laws such as the one described here, an issue is emerging that members of the counseling professions should not leave unattended. Through ignorance or complacency, we may contribute to the demise of the counseling professions as self-regulating groups. The authors examine this matter here and offer some recommendations for action.     

EFFECTS OF HUMOROUS ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS

Written educational selections and cartoons drawn to illustrate different educational points were arranged to effect a factorial variation in (1) level of difficulty of educational material (easy, difficult) and (2) amount of humor (no humor, moderate humor, extensive humor). Students read one version, evaluated it on a number of dimensions, and were tested over the material. Pictorial humorous illustrations were found to have no effect on information acquisition and on motivation, positive effects on appeal, and negative effects on persuasibility.     

Message Planning,Communication Failure,and Cognitive Load Further Explorations of the Hierarchy Principle

The hierarchy principle predicts and research has demonstrated that in response to communication failure, individuals make less cognitively demanding, low-level changes to message plans, such as the vocal intensity at which they are delivered, rather than more demanding alterations to message content and structure. Three experiments examined the effects of different message preparations on cognitive loads associated with high-level message plan alterations. In Experiment 1, individuals who prepared only one highly iconic message before experiencing communication failure demonstrated greater cognitive load when requested to deliver an alternative message than did individuals who prepared three highly iconic alternative messages. No cognitive load differences were found between those who prepared one or three low-iconicity messages. In Experiment 2, individuals who prepared one or six highly iconic message plans demonstrated greater cognitive load after communication failure than those who prepared three alternatives. This U-curve relationship was replicated in Experiment 3.     

Deterioration in Marital and Family Therapy: Empirical,Clinical, and Conceptual Issues

Recent empirical evidence of deterioration during both nonbehavioral and behavioral marital and family therapy is presented. While the frequency of patient worsening in marital-family therapy does not appear to exceed that previously found for individual psychotherapy, the acceptability of the evidence for negative effects in the treatment of systems may be greater than that which exists for individual treatment. After examining the empirical evidence of negative effects in family therapy and some of the factors that influence their occurrence, the authors discuss some conceptual issues relevant to a definition of worsening in marital and family therapy and present some methodological guidelines for the assessment of deterioration in therapy with family systems. It is concluded that the study of deterioration processes in family therapy may aid the understanding of family change processes more generally.