Child Development and Counseling

Elkind outlines three constructs, the assumptive reality of childhood and the imaginary audience and personal fable of adolescence, which help explain normal as well as problem behavior. In dealing with individuals operating under the premises of these constructs, counselors are asked to accept the young person's view of reality as valid for him or her, but not necessarily for the counselor or others. To structure a new reality, they should not be shown they are wrong, but helped to distinguish between personal and social reality.     

The center/satellite model: grand strategy for change

Whatever happened to the federal monies that used to support NDEA and EPDA counseling and guidance institute programs? Starting in 1971, an abrupt change in USOE policy led to the development of a new program, one that was no longer as much of a counseling and guidance program as it was a national and regional grand strategy for institutional and organizational change. In this article the author traces the new program from its origins during the days of the NDEA Institutes, and he also describes its potential as an instrument for change.     

Needed: professional ethics for working with groups

The present apga Ethical Standards statement is deficient in several respects regarding group work. It leaves judgment and responsibility entirely in the practitioner's hands. This article discusses the issues that arise from the properties and dynamics of groups themselves and ethical concerns that occur in the formation of groups in personnel and guidance work. It also offers suggestions for interpreting and extending the Ethical Standards in working with groups and examines the need for apga to seize leadership in developing appropriate new standards.     

Stability/Instability in the Alcoholic Marriage: The Interrelationships Between Course of Alcoholism,Family Process,and Marital Outcome

Thirty-one alcoholic families who were originally studied in home, multiple-family group, and laboratory settings were reassessed two years later to determine course of alcoholism and degree of marital stability. This paper presents data comparing baseline alcohol consumption and family interactional behavior at home with subsequent alcoholism and marital stability outcomes. Findings suggest that the relative degree of stability/instability in these marriages is best understood as a function of the “goodness-of-fit” between the relative predictability of drinking on the part of the identified alcoholic and the family's characteristic pattern of interactional behavior at home.     

The Effects of Vocalics and Nonverbal Sensitivity on Compliance A Speech Accommodation Theory Explanation

A speech accommodation theory explanation for the interaction between a receiver's decoding ability and a speaker's voice tone on compliance with requests for help was tested. It was predicted that good decoders would speak faster than poor decoders. Speech accommodation theory predicts that given this speech style difference, good decoders would make more favorable interpretations of a fast request that converged toward their faster speech rate; whereas poor decoders would make more favorable interpretations of a slow request that converged toward their slower speech rate. Requests receiving more favorable evaluations should result in greater compliance, because compliance with requests for help was predicted to follow an identification process. An experiment involving 168 participants confirmed this explanation. Good decoders spoke faster than poor decoders. Moreover, good decoders rated the fast request as more intimate and immediate, while poor decoders rated the slow request as more intimate and immediate. Good decoders, in turn, complied more with the fast request, which they rated more intimate and immediate, whereas poor decoders complied more with the slow request, which they rated more intimate and immediate.     

Patients’ Characteristics Affecting Physician-Patient Nonverbal Communication

Previous research has reported that nonverbal elements of physician-patient communication influence medical outcomes such as patients’ understanding, compliance, and saris/action with health care delivery. This investigation examined the impact of various patients’ characteristics (age, sex, education, anxiety, and relational history with the physician) on patterns of nonverbal communication exhibited in 41 physician-patient interactions at a family practice clinic. Several findings were noteworthy. First, although they were relatively consistent in their nonverbal responses to different patients, physicians generally reciprocated patient's adjustments in response latency, pauses during speaking turns, body orientation, and interruptions and compensated patient's modifications in turn duration and gestural rates. Second, physicians nonverbally interacted with patients over 30 years of age in a less domineering and more responsive fashion (e.g., comparable turn durations, more vocal back-channels, and more nonverbal behavior reciprocity) than they did when conversing with patients under 30. Third, physicians appeared responsive to patients experiencing various degrees of anxiety. Specifically, relative to their interactions with less worried patients, physicians used less task touch with anxious patients and to a greater degree compensated the worried patients nonverbal responses. Finally, the patients sex, education, and visit (i.e., first versus repeat) had little impact on the structure of physician-patient nonverbal exchanges.