the judged counseling effectiveness of high and low cognitive complexity .... Sixteen masters' degree candidates in Counselor Education at the University.
Differential supervision and cognitive structure effects on empathy and counseling effectiveness MARIA MALIKIOSI-LOIzOS National Center of Social Research with W.O. MEHNERTand G.G. WORK University of Maine
and JOELGOLD University of Maine
Abstract The present study investigated the effects of didactic and experiential supervision procedures on the judged counseling effectiveness of high and low cognitive complexity counselor trainees. Subjects in the two supervision groups (N = 16) were trained in attending, questioning, and reflection of feeling over three sessions. Training consisted of exposure to videotaped counseling models, discussion of the model's behavior with the supervisor, videotaped role playing of therapy, and discussion of the therapy with the supervisor. Training was exactly the same for both groups except for supervision. A control group (N = 8) did not receive any training. All subjects, including controls, were pre- and post-tested for counseling effectiveness as measured by judged tape ratings on the 25-item Counselor Effectiveness Scale and four scales designed to assess affective, exploratory, listening, and honest labeling responses. High complex subjects responsed more favorably to the didactic supervision significantly outperforming both the high complex controls and the low complex didactic subjects on four of the five dependent measures, whereas high and low complex subjects did not respond differentially to the experiential supervision. The results were discussed in terms of fittifig the complexity of the students to the supervision approach in selecting students for counseling programs.
Introduction
Of all the aspects of counselor education programs, the training practicum seems to be considered as the most crucial, and thus many investigations have focused on the importance of the training practicum in improving counseling skills (Delaney, Long, Masucci and Moses, 1969; Oksanen, 1973). One important aspect of the practicum is the supervision the student receives (Patterson, 1964). Educators have used a number of supervision techniques to assist prospective counselors in gaining competency in counseling. From the variety of these techniques, two basic approaches have developed: the didactic and the experiential. According to the didactic orientation, supervision should be primarily an information-giving process (Wolberg, 1954). The maj or concern of the supervisor is to provide information or teach behaviors (Ivey, Normington, Miller, Morrill and Haase, 1968) which will aid the trainees in dealing with clients and will foster their growth as competent professionals. Ivey et al. (1968) have lnt J Adv Couns 4:119-129 (1981) 0165-0653/8110042-0119 $ 01.65. © 1981 Martinus NOhoffPublishers, The Hague. Printed in the Netherlands.
120 M. Malikiosi-Loizos and J. Gold identified specific behaviors that seem important in counseling effectiveness and have developed techniques to teach these behaviors using video-tape modeling. Didactically oriented supervision usually involves (a) modeling of behavior by observing experienced role models through films, audio tapes, video tapes, and one-way vision screens; (b) a lecture-discussion approach designed to teach students to attend to both the verbal and nonverbal communications being observed, by having them engage in counts of target behaviors such as eye contact breaks; and (c) role playing of correct procedures with reinforcement by the supervisor. According to the experiential approach to counseling, practicum supervision should emphasize the development of the trainee's self-awareness on the assumption that a higher degree of self-awareness will make the trainee a better Counselor, able to deal more effectively with his clients (Gibbs, 1968; Rogers, 1957). This statement is based on the assumption that perceptive communication with others begins with a sensitive understanding of oneself, and an openness to and respect for a wide range of experiencing oneself. When a person can trust their own motives, they will be open to the feedback received from the client and will be most effective as a counselor (Silverman, 1972). In an experiential-introspective supervision approach, the supervision provides an environment and experiences that stimulate introspection and self-analysis. Class time is usually spent in individual and group activities focusing on introspection. The tasks of the members of the group are to learn who they are and who they are becoming, and to learn counseling primarily through experiencing some of its ingredients. The experientially oriented supervisors advocate the use of indirect supervisor behaviors such as listening, reflecting, and clarifying to help the supervisees explore the problems they are experiencing in counseling and supervision sessions (Agler, 1975). Thus, the two approaches, although having the same goal of producing more effective counselors, approach the goal in quite different ways. The didactic approach is a cognitive-behavioral mixture which provides information and focuses on rather concrete target behaviors occurring in therapy, while the experiential approach tends to be more diffuse an d abstract, dealing with interpretations of feelings within the trainees. Several studies have focused on the effects upon counseling skills of the didactic as opposed to the experiential approach. Most of these (Payne and Gralinski, 1968; Birk, 1972; Payne, Weiss and Kapp, 1972; Payne, Winter and Bell, 1972; and Carlson, 1974) have found the didactic to be more effective than the experiential in the learning of empathy. On the other hand, Silverman (1972, 1973) found that the experiential approach was more successful in fostering our affective relationships, as perceived by the counselor trainees
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and their clients. The present study was an attempt to investigate the differences between the two approaches in a controlled setting. Specifically, subjects were exposed to the same stimulus conditions (manuals, video tapes, and role playing) and carried out the same sequence of events, except for the supervision styles. Analysis and discussion of the video tapes and of their own role playing was done in either a didactic or an experiential manner.
Cognitive style and supervision model Since the two supervision models take quite different approaches, the effectiveness of one over the other may depend on the individual characteristics of the students. That is, since the didactic approach is a more finely differentiated system, it may be most effective when paired with students whose cognitive style is highly differentiating. On the other hand, the experiential approach, being more diffuse and abstract, may be congruent with a less differentiated cognitive style. The experiential approach deals with awareness of the feelings of the client and of the counselor and is thus much more concerned with affect than with cognition. The less cognitively differentiated student would then be less compatible with the didactic approach, but may be more compatible with the experiential approach. The cognitive complexity-simplicity dimension as it relates to interpersonal functioning seems especially promising since, as a personality variable, it reflects the differentiation of the individual's interpersonal construct system. Cognitive complexity has been defined by Bieri, Atkins, Briar, Leaman, Miller and Tripodi (1966) as a variable influencing person perception and evaluation of interpersonal events. It is characterized by tolerance toward ambiguity and uncertainties, a fondness for novel situations, and a preference for diversity (Heist and Yonge, 1968). The tolerance of ambiguity component of cognitive complexity has been a prominent variable associated with effective counseling in both theoretical writings (Bordin, 1955; Stone and Shertzer, 1963) and research investigations (Brams, 1961; Gruberg, 1966). The counseling situation contains a high level of ambiguity, especially for the counselor trainee. The didactic approach, in a sense, focuses on the ambiguity by directing the trainee to observe and note specific behaviors occurring in counseling, rather than having the trainee respond to the situation in a more global and affective manner. Thus, it would seem that didactic supervision would be more effective in training cognitively complex students while experiential supervision may be better suited for less cognitively complex trainees.
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Method
Subjects Sixteen masters' degree candidates in Counselor Education at the University of Maine, entering their practicum experience in the Spring semester of the academic year 1977-78, consented to serve as subjects for the two experimental groups. The control group consisted of eight masters' degree candidates in Counselor Education with no practicum experience who agreed to participate in the study. All counselor trainees were between the ages of 22 and 35; 20 of them being females. Supervisors Eight advanced doctoral candidates, 3 females and 5 males, enrolled in the doctoral supervision in counseling course, all with prior counseling experience, served as supervisors during the training period. They were randomly assigned to an equal number of subjects in each treatment group and then trained in supervisory skills following the didactically oriented approach, if they were assigned to Treatment A, or the experientially oriented approach, if they were assigned to Treatment B. Clients The clients were students enrolled in five-week modular courses of the College of Education at the University of Maine, who indicated their interest in talking with a counselor. Additional motivation to participate was provided by extra credit points in the modular course for the participants. Each subject (trainee) interviewed the same coached client at pre- and post-training. Clients were assigned to trainees on the basis of schedule compatability. All clients were informed that the interviews were both audio and videotaped. Instruments The Rating Scale of Counselor Effectiveness (Ivey, et al., 1968) is a 25-item semantic differential, available in parallel forms. Each item has seven discrete steps between the positive counselor trait (e.g., sensitive, skilled, confident) and negative counselor trait (insensitive, unskilled, doubts ability), so that the highest possible score achieved on the scale is 175 and the lowest possible score is 25. Four addition dimensions were added to the above 25_ These were the four
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dimensions described by Kagan (1972), which indicated the extent to which counselors' responses are characterized as affective, exploratory, listening, and honest labeling. An affective response is one which makes reference to or encourages some feeling aspect of the clients communication; an exploratory response encourages the client to explore his feelings, a listening response communicates to the client that he is being listened to or taken seriously, and an honest labeling response reflects the counselors willingness to deal directly and honestly with the clients' concerns. The Cognitive Complexity-Simplicity Scale (CC-SS) modified by Bieri et al. (1966) from Kelly's (1955) Role Construct Repertory Test was used to assess levels of interpersonal cognitive complexity. The CC-SS consists of ratings of individuals fitting ten role types selected to be representative of the meaningful persons in the subject's social environment, on ten bipolar construct dimensions. A high score on the CC-SS would indicate that the subject is relatively cognitively simple and a low score would indicate that the subject is relatively cognitively complex.
Procedure The design was a 3 (supervision model: didactic, experiential, no-treatment control) x 2 (high and low cognitive complexity) x 2 (pre and post measurement) factorial design. The study was carried out over five once-a-week sessions. In the first session, each subject was administered the cognitive complexity measure and carried out a 15 minute interview with a client. The 16 experimental subjects were divided into high and low cognitive complexity groups based upon a median split of their CC-SS scores and then randomly assigned to the two supervision methods. Control subjects were also divided into high and low complexity groups based upon a median split of their CC-SS scores. Sessions two through four, participated in only by the experimental subjects, dealt with training attending behavior, the use of questioning, and reflection of feeling respectively. For each topic subjects read a brief manual on the behavior and viewed video tapes of effective and ineffective counseling models performing the target behaviors. This was followed by behavioral counts of the specific behaviors of the models for the didactically oriented supervision groups, and by focusing on inferring the covert thoughts of the models for the experientially oriented supervision groups. For example, in the case of attending behavior, the didactically oriented subjects counted such behaviors as the number of breaks in eye-contact and the number of distracting gestures. The experientially oriented subjects answered questions about what the models were ~saying to themselves' and then focused on the
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different interpretations of the same behavior by different people. Subjects in both groups then broke into dyads and engaged in video-taped practice counseling sessions, with each dyad member serving as client and counselor for a five minute period. These practice sessions were then reviewed with the supervisors. Behavioral counts were again made of the target behaviors for the didactic supervision subjects. The experiential supervision subjects were asked to remember what they were thinking and feeling, what they thought the client was thinking and feeling, and what they wanted the client to think and feel. This same sequence of events: reading the manual, viewing the tapes, supervision with reference to the tapes, practice counseling, and review of the practice sessions with the supervisors was followed for all three skills - attending, questioning, and reflection of feeling. Both supervision groups read the same manuals, viewed the same tapes, and followed the same order of events. The only divergence was in the specific mode of supervision - didactic vs. experiential. In the fifth and final session, all subjects, including the controls, were administered the CC-SS and conducted a 15 minute video-taped interview with a client.
Results
Gounseling effectiveness The main question to be answered by the present study dealt with the effects of the two supervision methods and complexity on counseling skills. The evidence for counseling effectiveness came from ratings of the pre- and posttreatment interviews on the 25-item Counselor Effectiveness Scale. Seven to eight minute segments drawn from the middle of each interview were presented to each of the three judges in random order. Each judge carried out the rating process individually in order to insure the independence of the ratings. Pearson r's were then calculated between the judges ratings for each of the dimensions and averaged. The average intercorrelations for the pre-treatment judgments ranged between .653 and .889 with a mean of .775. The post-treatment judgments ranged between .642 and .938 with a mean of .753. Since the agreement was quite high, the ratings of the three judges were averaged for each dimension. In order to establish whether an underlying pattern of relationships existed among the dimensions, a Principal Factor solution, with squared multiple correlations in the diagonals, was calculated on the pre-treatment ratings.
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This yielded four factors with eigenvalues greater than one which were then varimax rotated. Since twenty-one of the 25 dimensions loaded above .40 on the first rotated factor, these were linearly combined to produce a single measure, hereafter referred to as counselor effectiveness. The remaining four dimensions were spread among the other three factors and consequently were excluded from further analysis. Since examination of the pre-treatment means showed differences among the groups, it was decided to carry out an analysis of covariance on the posttreatment scores, using the pre-treatment scores as a covariate. This analysis yielded a significant main effect for cognitive complexity, F (1,17) = 6.60, p < .05, with the high complex subjects being rated as more effective than their low complex counterparts. A significant treatment by complexity interaction was also found, F (2,17) = 4,50, p < .05. The adjusted means are presented in Table 1. Comparisons among the adjusted means, carried out via Scheffe's, test revealed that high complex subjects in the didactic treatment group were judged as more effective than th6 low complex didactic subjects, F (1,17) = 7.82, p < . 0 5 and more effective than the high complex control subjects, F (1,17) ----5.10, p < .05. On the other hand, the experiential high complex subjects did not differ significantly from their low complex counterparts or from the controls.
Table 1. Supervision by cognitive complexity adjusted means table of judged ratings on counseling effectiveness Groups
Didactic Experiential Control
Cognitive complexity High
Low
4.5971ab 4.3769 3 5967b
3.3588o 3.6934 3.7331
Note. Common subscripts indicate significant differencesat p < .05.
Separate analyses of covariance were carried out for each of the additional four dimensions included to tap affective, exploratory, listening, and honest labeling responses. The analyses yielded significant main effects for complexity for the affective dimension, F (1,17) = 7.39, p < . 0 5 and for supervision for the honest labeling dimension, F (2,17) = 3.86, p < .05. High complexity subjects were rated as encouraging more affect (M = 3.47) than their
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low complexity counterparts (M = 2.70). Experiential supervision subjects were judged to provide more honest labeling responses than the control subjects, but did not differ from the didactic supervision subjects. Supervision x complexity interactions were found for the affective, F (2,17) = 7.82, p < .01, exploratory, F (2,17) = 4.87, p < .05, and listening F (2,17)=7.09, p
