Affectively oriented counselors at three levels of experience : a linguistic analysis

The effects of counselors' level of experience on some semantic and stylistic characteristics of language were investigated. Two affectively oriented counselors at each of three levels of experience each interviewed two clients to help the clients express feelings stimulated by a guided fantasy experience. Audiotapes of the interviews were transcribed and processed via the Computer-Assisted Language Analysis System (CALAS) to obtain the dependent measures. There were no differences between groups on verb use percentages, average block length (ABL), or convergence and tracking of ABL and total clauses (CLT). Low experience level counselors were higher than medium experience level counselors on CLT and percent of talk and higher on CLT than high experience level counselors. High experience level counselors also had higher CLT and percent talk than medium experience level counselors. The difference between the two high experience level counselors exceeded the differences among the groups on CLT and percent of talk. The limitations of the study, small sample size, accuracy of the matching instrument, sensitivity of CALAS for describing differences in language between experience level groups, and application of inferential statistics to dependent variables that are not truly independent were discussed. The results were considered to suggest that these counselors did use language as one would expect of affectively oriented counselors. Recommendations for future research included narrower definition of theoretical orientation, increasing number of subjects and decreasing length of interview samples, using N of 1 studies to increase the descriptive base to other theoretical orientations, using sequential analysis, combining CALAS with content analysis, and continuing use of guided fantasy where appropriate.