Effects of verbal stimuli in a counseling analogue.

A review of counseling analogue research methods.

“…A number of different analogue tasks have been developed, and a variety of variables have been studied. Cole (1965) administered 20 subjects an automated counseling interview. Subjects were placed in a room by themselves and presented with instructions and topics for discussion on 3 X 5 index cards.…”

“…First, in most of the studies reviewed in this category the experimental task typically consists of conversation between people. Possible exceptions to this are the more traditional and automated verbal-conditioning studies (Cole, 1965;Vitalo, 1970). Often the conversations are centered around a structured interview in which the client subjects are asked to discuss some personally relevant topic, for example, personal problems and experience, values or beliefs, achievement motivation.…”

“…While one of the advantages cited in favor of doing analogue research is that one does not face the ethical questions involved in conducting experimental manipulation in actual counseling, clearly the same basic kinds of ethical questions are present in the client quasicounseling interview studies. A number of experimental manipulations used in the analogue studies that may have a systematic impact on the client subject's behavior are of questionable benefit to the client, for example, withholding facilitative conditions in studies where the clients are discussing personal problems (Holder et al, 1967) and reinforcing negative self-concept statements (Cole, 1965), Closer consideration of the ethical questions involved in doing analogue research where client behavior is actually changed may be needed.…”

"The study of therapy outcomes via experimental analogs: a review": Comment.

“…A recent check of the literature (b\ no means exhaustive) reveals that there have been several studies in which the manipulation of behavior, both in individual and in group sessions, has been related to tests of attitudmal and other changes in altered situations Moos (1963), for example, obtained retention effects but failed to observe reliable indications of generalization when an experimenter other than the conditioner interviewed the S Other studies, however, have met with greater success in generating measurable changes in such things as inter-and mtra-personal perceptions, judgments of the leadership qualities of self and others, and in producing increments in both positive and negative selfevaluation.s (Aiken, 1965a;Aiken, 1965b;Aiken & Parker, 1965, Babbitt, 1962, Klein, 1962 One study of particular relevance to counseling used tape-recorded verbal stimuli to reinforce negative statements about an individually preselected vocational concept (e g, elementary' teacher, nurse, etc.) and found that reinforced Ss declined in their evaluation of that concept on a post-test semantic differential (Cole, 1963(Cole, , 1965. Such studies would appear to be, as Zytowski comments, highly relevant to counseling.…”

Effects of verbal interaction conditions on self-concept discrimination and anxiety.

“…The first of these studies (Cole, 1965) indicated that an experimental interaction in which such features were incorporated provided a feasible and potentially useful approach to the study of verbal interactions. At the same time, the study established that measured changes in evaluative attitudes that occur subsequent to an interviewer's verbal interaction with a subject are heavily dependent upon the positive or negative (e.g., good-bad) direction of the discussion as well as upon the affective loading of the stimulus topic.…”