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The importance of active listening
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Communication skills are the most basic but also important skills anyone need, especially for the counselling professions. This essay will look at two of these specific skills and how it impacts on one of the most seen counselling professions, the Student Guidance Officers. These two skills will be active listening and rapport building which will be defined and described while referring to a sample video of the Student Guidance profession.
The Skill of Active Listening
Active listening, as opposed to listening, is when the listener tries to understand the speaker by contributing to the conversation. This means that the receiver of the message also needs to ask some questions in order to make sure that the message they received was what the sender sent. Whilst different research poses different definitions for this skill, most definitions composes of three elements (Weger, Castle, & Emmett, 2010). As shown by Levitt (2001), one of the elements to this skill is the expressing of non-verbal involvement as an indicator to the speaker that the listener is listening. The second element of active listening is the non-judgemental paraphrasing of the speaker’s messages into the listener’s own words (Trenholm & Jensen, 2004). The last element, as stated by Devito (2007), is the encouragement of elaboration through asking questions by the listener. This skill connects the listener to the speaker by building empathy and trust which can be achieved through confirming the speaker’s messages. This skill may also benefit the speaker as by reflecting the message without judgment it helps the speaker in understanding their own thinking and mind (Weger et al., 2010).
All elements for effective active listening were shown in the example...
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...ffiliation and Rapport. Psychological Science, 14(4), 334-339. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.14481.
Teoh, Y., & Lamb, M. (2010). Preparing Children for Investigative Interviews: Rapport-Building, Instruction, and Evaluation. Applied Developmental Science, 14(3), 154-163. doi:10.1080/10888691.2010.494463.
Saywitz, K. J., Goodman, G. S., Nicholas, E., & Moan, S. F. (1991). Children’s memories of a physical examination involving genital touch: Implications for reports of child sexual abuse. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 59, 682–691.
Siegman, A., & Reynolds, M. (1983). Effects of mutual invisibility and topical intimacy on verbal fluency in dyadic communication. Journal of Psyholinguistic Research, 12, 4443-4455.
Tobey, A., & Goodman, G. S. (1992). Children’s eyewitness memory: Effects of participation and forensic context. Child Abuse & Neglect, 16, 779–796.
...at because of the size of the children there would have been physical symptoms, no documented evidence of this sort was presented during the case. Out of 100 students no physical symptoms were ever recorded, and not one student said anything about abuse until four years later when the investigator was pursued (Silvergate, 2004) No parents ever filed complaints prior to police investigation. Because memories are malleable and children are even more vulnerable to authority, it is very probable that some children just complied to the leading questions due to fear, but is it possible that they all could? The influence of the investigators parallels to the influence of therapists in cases of sexually abused children's recovered memories.
More than 200,000 children may be involved in the legal system in any given year, and 13,000 of these children are preschool age. Often with these cases involving young children, issues arise concerning credibility, vulnerability, and memory retrieval. Studies have shown that preschool age children are quite capable of providing accurate testimony, but they are also more vulnerable to distorting this memory and testimony. Public and professional opinion about the credibility of children as witnesses in court cases has been sharply divided. On one side, it is contended that when children disclose details of a circumstance, they must be believed, no matter what techniques were used to obtain this disclosure. For example, if a child is asked whether or not he/she was abused, and to describe this incident, we must believe that child because children cannot possibly generate a false report of their own sexual victimization. The other side depicts children as being helpless sponges ...
According to London et al. (2005) “ a major problem with relying on children’s statements in forensic investigations is that many sexually abused children remain silent about abuse; they may deny that abuse ever occurred, or they may produce a series of disclosures of abuse followed by recantations of these disclosures” (p.195). Most of this happens because children blame themselves; attempt to make everything better in the family or mothers pressure them to change their
This is what sparked the use of anatomical dolls in cases of sexual abuse with children. Multiple interviews with children and other witnesses with disabilities can also result in suggestive testimony. The first interviewer may have communicated suggestions to the child which are then repeated as truth in the subsequent testimony. In the past an investigation of child abuse might have the victim interviewed by a detective, a child protective services caseworker, a physician and a prosecutor. When the research indicated a problem with suggestive interviewing, a concern began to develop that the child was parroting to the later interviewers what they believed the prior interviewers desired to hear. This has led to the development of family advocacy centers where a child is interviewed a single time by a specialist and the information provided to appropriate
Lyon, T. D., Scurich, N., Choi, K., Handmaker, S., & Blank, R. (2012). "how did you feel?": Increasing child sexual abuse witnesses' production of evaluative information. Law and Human Behavior, 36(5), 448-457.
...is increased to a total of 19 when the researchers presented them with a concrete example (what their name is). The data shows how there is a correlation between IQ score and ability to be a witness and understanding the truth. Prescreening victims and also incorporating an understanding of the truth and knowing the difference in the truth and a lie should be something that is implemented in some of the programs that assist the intellectually disabled. The study also noted that there is currently no program that includes any training in relation to the law. So there is a possibility that we can increase their knowledge and expose individuals with intellectual disabilities to courses that help them understand what a truth and lie are and hopefully reduce the amount of false memories and misinformation that these individuals are exposed to and may come across.
...of Sexual Abuse." Recognizing Signs of Sexual Abuse. Child and Family Institute, 2001. Web. 21 Apr.
Recently there has been an extreme debate between "false" vs. "repressed" memories of abuse. A false memory is created when an event that really happened becomes confused with images produced by trying to remember an imagined event. The term false memory syndrome refers to the notion that illusionary and untrue memories of earlier child abuse can be 'recalled' by adult clients during therapy. In an increasingly polarized and emotive debate, extreme positions have been adopted, on one side by those believing that recovered memories nearly always represent actual traumatic experiences, for example, Fredrickson (1992) who argues for a 'repressed memory syndrome' and, on the other side, by those describing a growing epidemic of false memories of abuse which did not occur. (Gardner, 1992; Loftus, 1993; Ofshe & Watters, 1993; Yapko, 1994).
Regan, P.C. & Baker, S.J. (1998). The impact of child witness demeanor on perceived credibility and trial outcome in sexual abuse cases. Journal of Family Violence, 13(2), 187-195.
Listening is a vital and important part of communication. While speaking clearly and concisely is imperative, true listening is central to speaking with mindfulness and in the case of the counselor, this mindfulness has the possibility of leading clients to their own solutions to life’s tough circumstances. In his book, Petersen (2007) breaks down the communication cycle so that we can be aware of how we react when people share their emotions with us, and how to effectively communicate by listening and speaking in turn to build strong and supportive relationships, whether they are personal or professional.
Child sexual abuse is defined as “the involvement of a child in sexual activity that he or she does not fully comprehend, is unable to give informed consent to, or for which the child is not developmentally prepared, or else that violates the laws or social taboos of society” (Ajduković, Sušac, and Rajter 470). In Bastard out of Carolina, Ruth Ann “Bone” Boatwright started experiencing sexual child abuse from her stepfather at the age of twelve, which changed aspects of her life forever. Coincidentally, it was proven through research that young girls between the ages of 13 and 16 suffered sexual abuse by adult men that they knew previously (Ajduković, Sušac, and Rajter 475). While it could be a family member, an acquaintance, or a friend, the feelings of betrayal remain the same.
McLeod, J. and McLeod, J. (2011) Counselling skills: A practical guide for counsellors and helping professionals, 2nd editions, New York: McGraw Hill
Sexual abuse cannot be clearly defined with ease. In fact, sexual abuse is an umbrella term for any sort of situation, whether or not it involves physical contact, in which a sexually immature child is exposed to anything sexual in nature. Because no child is psychologically mature enough for sexual stimulation, the complex feelings associated with it are mentally and emotionally disfiguring. Children who have been sexually abused experience an array of negative emotions such as shame, guilt and anger, and may display oddly withdrawn or distrustful behaviors. They cannot help but feel that they somehow brought the abuse unto themselves (Saisan, et al). One major contributing factor to these severe psychological consequences is the concept of trust. Sexual abuse is, in most cases, committed by a parent or other trusted adult figure. While children are naïve on such adult topics, they can still get an overwhelming feeling that the attention is wrong, yet they are unsure of how to cope with it. If the child has an emotional atta...
Finkelhor, D., & Browne, A. (1985). The Traumatic Impact of Child Sexual Abuse [Abstract]. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 55(4), 530-541. Retrieved from http://sycnet.apa.org/journals/ort/55/4/530/
Many people think of the physical and sexual sides of child abuse and they often forget