Microcounseling and Beyond: A Dialogue with Allen Ivey

This interview with Allen Ivey reflects the recent changes in his micro-counseling model and the manifestation of his social consciousness in microcounseling's cross-cultural patina.     

Beatrice A. Wright: Broad Lens,Sharp Focus

Beatrice A. Wright, a prominent rehabilitation psychologist, was interviewed about various aspects of her personal life, scholarly contributions, professional development, and the field of rehabilitation psychology and counseling in general.     

Behavioral Assessment of Job-Related Skills

An important aspect of finding and retaining employment is a person's level of occupational skills. Little information, however, is currently available on the comparative levels of job-related skills among both unemployed and successfully-employed adults. This study, using direct-observation techniques, analyzes the occupational skills of these two groups. The results show that employed adults performed significantly better than unemployed adults on each of 13 job-related skills assessed. These differences were found for both job-finding and job-retention skills. These assessment methods may be useful to employment counselors interested in helping their clients find and retain satisfactory employment.     

Autism and receptive dysphasia: Evaluation of comparative studies

Ten different studies comparing children with autism and receptive dysphasia are reviewed. Most of the studies aimed to characterize autism as a language disorder. The representativity of the samples are discussed according to heterogeneity of the autistic and dysphatic populations, and sex and social class distributions. Group differences and similarities are listed and discussed according to sample selection and matching procedures, age and sex distribution, social class membership, and the defining criteria of the two illnesses. It is concluded that the studies do not fullfill their aim, and that the project of comparing dysphatic and autistic children seems unfruitful. Group differences which seem unconnected with methodological difficulties, selection procedure, or group defining criteria, were found in parental background, use of gestures, articulation, and reading.     

Communication Patterns in an International Student Dormitory: A Modification of the “Small World” Method1

Milgram's “small world” method was modified to trace communication patterns in an international student dormitory containing 500 residents from 38 different countries. Eighteen residents served as “starters” for chain-booklets that circulated through the dormitory from friend to friend. Social networks were inferred from the circulation pattern of booklets. Sixteen chains progressed beyond their respective starters, and a total of 86 transactions were recorded. Four determinants of social relations were investigated: culture similarity, sex, organizational affiliation, and residential propinquity. The circulation pattern of the booklets showed that culture similarity was a major determinant of social interaction among the residents. The other main determinant was sex similarity. Organizational affiliation was less important, and proximity played only a minor role in determining communication patterns in the dormitory.     

Sisterhood-Brotherhood is Powerful: Sibling Sub-Systems and Family Therapy

Sibling interaction is an often overlooked aspect of family functioning. Individual development and many family behavior patterns may be attributed to autonomous activities within the sibling sub-system.
A number of phenomena in which siblings have profound influence upon one another are explored. Siblings collude and align with each other, at times help each other resist the powerful vertical influences of parents. Other sibling systems serve to enmesh the youngsters even more with parents. Important sib-behavior patterns include: the death or departure of siblings; the interplay between the sibling sub-system and the parenting system; and the roles that "well" siblings play vis-à-vis their "sick" siblings during family crises. The sibling relationship is seen as a life-long process, highly influential throughout the life cycle.
Understanding of sibling sub-system structure and dynamics can lead to more flexible therapeutic interventions. Direct work with siblings provides the therapist with more options and greater leverage in producing change for all siblings, as well as for other family members.     

Facilitation of early speech development in a dysphatic child by use of signed Norwegian

Non-vocal language intervention is mostly used to develop communication skills in severely dysfunctional children. In the present study, a 3-year-old dysphatic boy was taught signs to facilitate his speech development. After 6 months of sign instruction, he showed substantial improvement in spoken language, and had gained one year on the Receptive and the Expressive scales of Reynell Developmental Language Scales in half a years time. Behavior problems were markedly reduced. It is concluded that sign instruction may be used with a wider range of subjects than is usual today.