| Abstract: | We identified categories of counselor self-talk and explored for possible dimensions that underlie the categories. The 38 counselors conducted 25-min interviews with a female client and then completed a stimulated-recall, thought-listing exercise. Trained judges categorized the resulting 768 self-talk statements into 14 categories, with approximately 61% of the statements accounted for by the four largest categories (client-focused questions, summarizations, inferences or hypotheses, and self-instructions). A multidimensional scaling analysis identified two underlying dimensions that reflect Attending and Assessing vs Information Seeking and Integrative Understanding vs Intervention Planning. The findings are discussed in terms of counselor cognitive processing and are related to previous research on counselor intentions. Suggestions for future research are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
