The Preservation of Counseling in an Era of Cutback Management

This article identifies several unique problems and survival strategies to enable counselors to preserve the level and quality of counseling services under conditions of declining resources.     

Assaultive Adolescents: Family Decision-Making Parameters

This article presents the results of a pilot study that investigated the family decision-making styles of families with a violent adolescent ( 17 ) and families with a normal adolescent ( 12 ). The results, utilizing an unrevealed differences family interactional test, showed that families with an assaultive teenager when contrasted with normal families had: (a) less agreement when making choices as a group; (b) less agreement between mother and violent son when making choices about activities; (c) sons who had less influence in the families' choice of activities; and, (d) mothers who "dictated" the families' decisions more often. The meanings of these findings and others are discussed by the authors as they relate to the problem of assaultive youths.     

On decision rules and information processing strategies for choices among multiattribute alternatives

Abstract.— It is suggested that a decision in a complex situation can be described as a sequential process in which different decision rules and information processing strategies can be used at different points in time. Examples of possible decision rules are presented in an approximate order of complexity. Two ways for processing the information in a decision situation, viz., breadth-first or depth-first strategies, are discussed and suggestions are made about their relationship to particular decision rules. Finally, it is proposed that the order of application of particular rules in a decision process is guided by a tendency to minimize cognitive effort.     

Mental models and problem solving: Three challenges to a theory of restructuring and insight

The Gestalt psychologists' view of restructuring and the associated phenomenon of insight is discussed and related to findings in modern cognitive psychology. In line with Ohlsson (1984b) it is assumed that search in semantic memory is an indispensable part of restructuring. However, in contrast to Ohlsson's (1984b) information processing theory of restructuring and insight the present paper focuses on the role of mental models. It is asserted that the Gestalt approach to problem solving is compatible with the idea that a mental model is manipulated. The paper discusses three assumptions of restructuring and insight, all of which are related to mental models: (a) restructuring involves manipulating a mental model; (b) the experience of insight is based on "seeing" something in a mental model; (c) restructuring aims at realizing structural balance in a mental model. To assess the validity of these three assumptions is seen as a challenge to future research on human problem solving.     

Qualitative Evaluation Methods Applied to a High School Counseling Center

The authors present a case study demonstrating how qualitative techniques can be used to evaluate a high school counseling and guidance program.     

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.