Differences in Experienced and Novice Counselors' Knowledge Structures About Clients: Implications for Case Conceptualization

Concept mapping tasks (CMTs) and association tasks were used to examine knowledge structures about clients. Four experienced and 5 novice counselors read a counseling transcript, categorized client statements, and mapped the relationships among categories. Cluster analyses revealed that novice couns...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of counseling psychology 1999-10, Vol.46 (4), p.504-514
Main Authors: Mayfield, Wayne A, Kardash, CarolAnne M, Kivlighan, Dennis M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Clients
Clinical Judgment (Not Diagnosis)
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive Structures
Concept Formation
Concept Mapping
Conceptualization
Counseling
Counseling Psychology
Counselling psychology
Counsellors
Counselor Characteristics
Counselor Evaluation
Counselors
Experience Level
Experiences
Factors
Female
Health staff related problems. Vocational training
Human
Information Processing
Knowledge
Knowledge Level
Male
Medical sciences
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Psychotherapeutic Processes
Social psychiatry. Ethnopsychiatry
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Summary:Concept mapping tasks (CMTs) and association tasks were used to examine knowledge structures about clients. Four experienced and 5 novice counselors read a counseling transcript, categorized client statements, and mapped the relationships among categories. Cluster analyses revealed that novice counselors (a) had more concept categories and (b) formed categories based on the temporal order of client statements. Structural features of CMTs indicated that novice counselors constructed simplistic, hierarchical representations containing few reciprocal links between categories. Experienced counselors were faster than novices at completing some of the tasks. These results support the information-processing perspective with novice counselors attending to surface detail and requiring greater time to process information, which may be indicative of their less developed schemas and skills related to structuring client information.
ISSN:0022-0167
1939-2168
DOI:10.1037/0022-0167.46.4.504