This study compared the effects of three treatment approaches to training married couples in communication skills on the dependent variables of marital communication, marital adjustment, and the personality characteristics of extraversion/introversion and stability/instability. The initial focus of the study was to determine whether any of the treatment programs--a highly structured (T3), a partially structured (T1 ) or a non-structured (T 2) program -- were superior to any other or to the control group in affecting change in the participants level of communication or in their marital or personal adjustment. The structured programs were derived from the human relations training programs of Carkhuff as well as Rappaport and Harrell's Behavior Exchange Model of conjoint marriage counseling, and adapted for use in a short-term group training procedure. The unstructured training utilized the client-centered approach to couple counseling as developed by Rogers. The number of activities and amount of time spent on each exercise was more rigidly set in the highly structured training than in the partially structured approach. The twenty-four training programs were conducted by two doctoral students in counseling over a seven-week period. A pretest/ post-test, control group experimental design was employed in the research; the data were analyzed using the …

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of the evaluation of the effectiveness of the EPI-C model as a guide to group counseling. The purposes of the study are (1) to determine whether group counseling employing the EPI-C model results in positive gain in self-actualization, and (Z) whether group counseling using the EPI-C model is more effective than a topical discussion group or no treatment at all in producing greater positive change in subject self-actualization. This report concludes that the EPI-C model as a guide to group counseling is effective as a means of increasing reliance on inner support, increasing ascendance levels, emotional stability, and objectivity. The model also produced changes in assessed congruence of the emotional, physical and intellectual self. It demonstrated that the EPI-C model facilitated the growth of individuals on certain dimensions of self -actualization.

This study was designed to determine the effects of play therapy on the adjustment of children identified as socially and psychologically maladjusted. The effects of play therapy on six variables were investigated. Those variables were: social adjustment, personal adjustment, self-concept, school-related self-concept, behavioral maturity as rated by the teacher, and inferred self-concept as rated by the parent. The general nature of the research hypotheses was that play therapy would effect positive change in the children on the six variables. The results of the study led to the conclusion that during a fifteen-week period play therapy effects statistically significant change in social adjustment, but not in personal adjustment, self-concept, or behavior as perceived by others. Implications of the study based on observations of the experimenter were that all changes made during the therapy process were not reflected by the tests which were available. It was recommended that further research on the effects of play therapy place special emphasis on the selection or development of instruments to measure changes made during therapy.

The problem of the study was to identify stress arising in psychological counseling by identifying variations in the vocal pitch (fundamental frequency level) of clients' voices. Hypotheses were established to (1) determine the number of categories describing acoustically similar clients' responses within the counseling session and compare these categories with ratings of client stress, (2) determine the relationship between ratings of client stress and different fundamental frequency characteristics, and (3) compare fundamental frequency characteristics of in-session and repeated client verbalizations. Recommendations included (1) considering an improved acoustical analysis method capable of providing immediate feedback which could be used to study both moment-to-moment and longitudinal stress changes, (2) correlating vocal pitch variations with other physiological manifestations indicative of stress, (3) applying acoustical analysis to aid in counselor training, and (4) using acoustical analysis to study different specific types of populations.