Prognostic signs for the pastoral counselor from the life of Christ

Summary In this paper I have suggested examples of character traits in persons Jesus tells us about, or whom he dealt with, which can serve as suggestive material in determining the prognosis of persons either in or contemplating pastoral counseling. Among these I have given: first, the ability of a person to reach out, still trying to become life-related or to maintain the relations which he has already established; second, the capacity of the person for relationship, his being able to have feeling, interest, or concern for others, or reality beyond himself; and, third, I have indicated the idea of a person's being able to look at himself in an objective sense, not merely needing to live a defensive life, guardedly protecting his ego as though it could not tolerate any kind of a critical approach. In these concepts of self I believe we have the basic questions regarding the person's success or failure in the process of pastoral counseling.     

Conditioned reinforcement in second-order schedules

Pigeons responded under a schedule in which food was presented only after a fixed number of fixed-interval components were completed. Two such second-order schedules were studied: under one, 30 consecutive 2-min fixed-interval components were required; under the other, 15 consecutive 4-min fixed-interval components were required. Under both schedules, when a 0.7-sec stimulus light was presented at completion of each fixed interval, positively accelerated responding developed in each component. When no stimulus change occurred at completion of each fixed interval, relatively low and constant rates of responding prevailed in each component; a similar result was obtained when a 0.7-sec stimulus change occurred at completion of each fixed interval except the one which terminated with primary reinforcement. The 0.7-sec stimulus correlated with food delivery was an effective conditioned reinforcer in maintaining patterns of responding in fixed-interval components despite low average frequencies of food reinforcement.