Evaluation of Silence in Initial Interviews With Psychiatric Clinic Patients

Effects of failure to meet client preference in a counseling interview analogue.

“…Talk-time ratio correlated .37 (p < .05) with relationship satisfaction and .29 (p < .05) with competence satisfaction. Thus, measures of silence in the present study support the results of earlier research in which such measures have predicted negative outcomes in counseling (e.g., Sloane et al, 1975;Staples & Sloane, 1970;White et al, 1964).…”

Psychotherapy research and the expectation-reality discrepancy.

“…The few patients who find the burden tolerable without requiring participation by the therapist are almost always in the upper intellectual and educational brackets. The findings of White, Fichtenbaum and Dollard (1964) indicate that there are fewer silences in initial interviews among upper social class patients. Drop-outs from therapy had more than three times as much silence in initial interviews as continuers, but the extent of silence discriminated drop-outs in the lower classes only, and not in the middle class.…”

Silence in psychiatric interviews

“…For the purpose of the investigation, silence was deemed to have occurred when 10 seconds had elapsed without a verbal communication. This was found to be a convenient time interval, although in a recent report (White, Fichtenbaum & Dollard, 1964) 5-second phases were used when recording silences in initial psychiatric interviews. This period would have been too short when considering silences in groups.…”