NBCC NCE-ABE National Counselor Examination Exam Practice Test

Within Counseling and Helping Relationships, CACREP includes knowledge of systemic and family counseling theories, including structural family therapy developed by Salvador Minuchin.

Structural family therapy views the family as a system that seeks homeostasis, meaning it tends to maintain its existing patterns and organization, even when those patterns are dysfunctional. A core idea is that the family structure (subsystems, boundaries, hierarchies, alignments) maintains symptoms to preserve this homeostatic balance. Interventions aim at restructuring these patterns so that healthier, more flexible functioning can emerge. Thus, the concept of homeostatic systems (A) is central to this model.

Catharsis and interpersonal feedback (B) are more characteristic of group counseling models (for example, Yalom’s therapeutic factors), not uniquely structural family therapy.

Therapeutic spontaneity (C) is more closely associated with experiential family therapists such as Carl Whitaker, who emphasized creativity and spontaneity.

Conflict resolution (D) can occur in many counseling approaches but is not the defining core construct of Minuchin’s structural model; the key focus is on family structure and systemic homeostasis.

Therefore, among the options provided, homeostatic systems (A) is the primary component most directly tied to structural family therapy.

In the Counseling and Helping Relationships core area, CACREP includes knowledge of major counseling theories, including Reality Therapy/Choice Theory. Reality therapy emphasizes:

Personal responsibility for choices and behaviors

Focus on current behavior rather than the past

Collaborative evaluation of whether the client’s behavior is helping them meet their needs

The counselor’s role is not to act as an authority who fixes the client, but as a collaborative partner who:

Builds a warm, involved relationship

Helps the client evaluate their own behavior

Encourages the client to accept responsibility and make more effective choices

Therefore:

Option A (consultant solving problems) is too expert-driven and takes responsibility away from the client.

Option B (effective listener) is necessary but does not capture the responsibility-focused, collaborative nature of reality therapy.

Option C (parental surrogate) conflicts with the reality therapy emphasis on adult responsibility, not dependency.

The best description of the reality therapy counselor’s role is D. A partner who helps the client accept behavioral responsibility.

In Counseling and Helping Relationships, especially in systemic and family counseling, Minuchin’s structural family therapy focuses on:

Family structure (patterns of interaction),

Subsystems,

Boundaries,

Rules and norms that govern behavior.

The “standards that govern behavior” in a family—what is acceptable, expected, or prohibited—are best described as family norms (Option B). These norms shape how members interact, how power is distributed, and how roles are carried out.

Family hierarchy (D) is one important aspect of structure (who has authority over whom), but the broader phrase “standards that govern behavior” aligns more directly with norms and rules across the whole family system.

Genetics (A) and socioeconomic status (C) may influence the family, but they are not Minuchin’s primary explanatory construct for behavioral standards.

Thus, B. Family norms is the best answer.

Within the Counseling and Helping Relationships core area, CACREP highlights the importance of empathy and the counselor’s ability to be fully present with the client. Empathic attunement refers to:

Deeply tuning in to the client’s emotional experience,

Staying present with the client without judging, fixing, or overanalyzing,

Conveying understanding and acceptance of the client’s internal world.

Active listening (option B) involves attending behaviors and reflective responses, but empathic attunement specifically emphasizes nonjudgmental presence and emotional resonance with the client’s experience. Interpretation (option A) involves analyzing or offering meanings, which is the opposite of simply sitting with the experience. Integration (option C) refers more broadly to combining insights or aspects of the self, not this particular stance.

Under Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice, CACREP-aligned ethics stress that:

Counselors have a clear duty to protect confidentiality,

But in group counseling, the leader cannot ethically guarantee that other members will maintain confidentiality.

The counselor must explain the limits of confidentiality and encourage members to honor group privacy.

Therefore, the group leader’s ethical obligation is to strongly encourage members not to share group discussions outside the group and to educate them about the importance and rationale for confidentiality. This is captured by Option B.

Option A is unethical because no counselor can guarantee that other members will keep information confidential.

Option C incorrectly suggests members should limit sharing only to non-counseling details, which is not how confidentiality is framed; the focus is on not sharing other members’ counseling-related disclosures.

Option D weakens the standard by suggesting that some sharing is acceptable if “discreet,” which conflicts with the usual ethical guidance to avoid sharing group members’ personal information at all.

Thus, B best reflects the ethical obligation of a group leader regarding confidentiality.

In the Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice core area, counselors are taught to follow ethical procedures when addressing suspected ethical violations by colleagues, consistent with codes such as the ACA Code of Ethics. These standards state that when a counselor believes that another professional has violated an ethical standard, they should:

First attempt an informal resolution, when appropriate,

Approach the colleague directly, in a respectful, private manner,

Discuss the concern and encourage corrective action.

Only when informal resolution is not appropriate, not effective, or the violation is severe or poses immediate harm are more formal actions (e.g., reporting to supervisors, licensing boards, or professional organizations) recommended. In this situation, Counselor B’s behavior appears to violate confidentiality, but there is no indication that a direct, private conversation would be unsafe or impossible.

Therefore, in line with CACREP-aligned ethics instruction, Counselor A should first attempt to address the concern informally by speaking privately with Counselor B, making B the correct answer.

The Human Growth and Development core area covers developmental differences, including work with children who have intellectual disabilities. Children with mild intellectual impairment typically:

Learn best through concrete, hands-on, and highly structured experiences,

Benefit from clear, specific, and immediately relevant examples, especially in social and interpersonal domains.

Option D (“facilitate active and concrete examples of social interaction”) matches these principles. It uses active practice and concrete modeling to teach social skills, which is consistent with developmentally appropriate interventions for mild intellectual impairment.

A (psychoeducation about recognizing others’ emotions) may be useful but is often too abstract if not paired with concrete, experiential methods.

B focuses on academic support rather than counseling techniques or social-emotional intervention.

C (free play) provides unstructured interaction and may not be sufficient for skill building without guided, concrete instruction.

Therefore, D represents the best technique in line with developmental theory and appropriate intervention strategies for children with mild intellectual impairment.

In Group Counseling and Group Work, one of the classic group formats covered is the encounter group (closely related to sensitivity or T-groups). Encounter groups typically:

Emphasize personal growth and here-and-now interpersonal awareness,

Aim to decrease inhibitions and increase authenticity and emotional expression,

Often use intensive or “marathon” sessions to facilitate deep exploration of interpersonal issues.

This description matches encounter groups (A) exactly.

Psychoanalytic groups (B) emphasize insight into unconscious processes, using interpretation and transference analysis.

Psychoeducational groups (C) focus on structured teaching of skills or information (e.g., health, coping skills).

Humanistic (D) is a broader theoretical orientation; many encounter groups are humanistic, but the specific term used for this kind of intensive, awareness-focused marathon group is “encounter group.”

Within Counseling and Helping Relationships, CACREP includes major counseling theories, including behavioral approaches. Behaviorism focuses on observable behavior and the ways it is learned and maintained through conditioning and reinforcement.

From a behavioral perspective:

Behaviors (including “inappropriate” or maladaptive ones) increase in frequency when they are reinforced—by attention, relief from discomfort, tangible rewards, or avoidance of something aversive.

Thus, when a behavior continues, behaviorists look for the reinforcement history that keeps it going.

The other options reflect different theoretical orientations:

A (defense mechanism) is psychoanalytic/psychodynamic.

B (symptom of intrapersonal conflict) aligns with psychodynamic or some humanistic views.

C (early family conflict) fits Adlerian or some family systems perspectives.

Only D accurately states the behaviorist position: inappropriate behavior persists because it is reinforced and therefore tends to reoccur.

Within the Counseling and Helping Relationships core area, CACREP emphasizes that effective counseling is grounded in the therapeutic relationship—especially the quality of the working alliance (agreement on goals, tasks, and the emotional bond between counselor and client). Across theories and techniques, outcome research consistently shows that the strength of the counseling alliance is one of the most powerful and consistent predictors of positive client outcome, often more predictive than the specific technique or theoretical orientation used.

While hopefulness (C) and evidence-based treatments (D) are important, they are not as consistently predictive across all modalities and client populations as the quality of the alliance. Technique choice (e.g., CBT, option B) also matters, but CACREP-aligned training and NCE materials repeatedly highlight the helping relationship and working alliance as central to successful outcomes. Therefore, A. A strong alliance with the client is the best answer.

In the Career Development core area, counselors are expected to understand career transitions, including job loss and downsizing, and appropriate counseling responses.

Outplacement counseling often occurs right after involuntary job loss. CACREP-aligned content emphasizes that in initial stages of such a transition, the counselor should:

Address the client’s emotional reactions, such as shock, anger, grief, shame, or anxiety.

Provide space to process the psychological impact of losing a job (loss of identity, routine, status, security).

Stabilize the client before moving into action-oriented tasks like job search strategies, retraining, or interviewing.

Options A, B, and C are important later career counseling tasks (exploring retraining, developing interview skills, integrating work with lifestyle), but the immediate counseling goal after downsizing is to help the client cope with and process the feelings associated with the loss.

Thus, D. Cope with the resulting feelings is the correct answer.

Within the CACREP core area Counseling and Helping Relationships, counselors are expected to understand major counseling theories, including cognitive-behavioral approaches. Cognitive-behavioral counseling is based on the assumption that thoughts and behaviors are learned and therefore can be changed through structured interventions. It is:

Problem-focused and goal-oriented

Time-limited and highly structured

Emphasizes specific techniques that directly target the client’s presenting issue

This matches the description in the question: the counselor believes (1) most thoughts and behaviors are learned and changeable, and (2) specific procedures can be designed to help solve a particular problem.

Existential counseling (B) focuses on meaning, freedom, choice, and responsibility, not mainly on learned behaviors and structured techniques.

Person-centered counseling (C) emphasizes unconditional positive regard, empathy, and congruence, with a non-directive stance rather than specifically designed problem-solving procedures.

Trait-and-factor counseling (D) is associated with career counseling, focusing on matching traits to occupational factors, not on changing learned thoughts and behaviors.

Thus, the orientation described is cognitive behavioral counseling (A).

In Counseling and Helping Relationships, counselors are trained in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral interventions such as systematic desensitization. This technique involves:

Developing a fear hierarchy (e.g., levels of anxiety for social situations),

Teaching relaxation or coping skills, and

Gradually pairing relaxation with exposure to feared situations.

Client progress is often measured using Subjective Units of Discomfort/Distress (SUDS) ratings. When the intervention is effective, the client’s SUDS ratings for the same stimulus (e.g., attending a social event) decrease over time.

A decrease from 70 to 60 (Option A) indicates that the client experiences less anxiety in that situation, which is evidence that systematic desensitization is working.

An increase from 60 to 70 (Option B) shows worsening anxiety.

Reactivity due to being observed or keeping a diary (Options C and D) refers to measurement reactivity or the Hawthorne effect, not to successful treatment outcomes.

Therefore, the best indicator that systematic desensitization is working is the decrease in SUDS rating, making A the correct answer.

Within Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice, CACREP highlights the importance of counselors understanding impairment, burnout, and self-care—for themselves and in general occupational contexts.

Burnout is typically defined as a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion that results from chronic work-related or career-related stress, often accompanied by decreased sense of accomplishment and depersonalization.

Option D captures burnout as a phenomenon associated with career-related (occupational) stress, which is the broad, accurate description tested on the NCE.

Options A, B, and C each describe possible symptoms or correlates (hopelessness, confusion, fatigue, illness), but none by themselves constitute the definition of burnout. Burnout is best understood as a syndrome arising from prolonged job stress, making D the best answer.

In the Counseling and Helping Relationships core area, CACREP identifies basic counseling skills such as paraphrasing, reflecting feeling, summarizing, and using empathy.

Summarization pulls together several client statements over time, capturing multiple pieces of content and associated feelings, and then checking for accuracy.

In the statement given, the counselor:

Integrates several experiences (setting boundaries, explaining maternity leave, fielding questions).

Reflects the emotional tone (tired of colleagues’ behaviors, not feeling they’re meeting her halfway).

Ends with a checking-for-accuracy question (“Am I understanding that correctly?”).

This is characteristic of summarization, not just a brief paraphrase of one point.

Additive empathy would involve going beyond what has been stated and offering a deeper interpretation not yet voiced by the client. Reflection of meaning focuses more on deeper values and life meaning. Paraphrasing is shorter and usually focuses on just one main idea.

Because the counselor is organizing and restating multiple themes and feelings in a concise way, the best skill label in line with NCE content is C. Summarization.

The Group Counseling and Group Work core area requires counselors to know the advantages and limitations of using groups in various settings, including career counseling.

One commonly noted limitation is that:

Group members often have a wide range of individual needs, interests, and career concerns.

A group format can make it challenging for the leader to tailor content, activities, and feedback to each person’s unique interests and decision-making stage.

This is exactly what option D describes: the leader may struggle to address the full variety of individual interests in a group setting.

Why the others are not best:

A: It is possible (and common) to assess members’ occupational functioning through intakes, assessments, and individual check-ins, even in group programs.

B: Psychological functioning can be assessed in a group setting; group counselors are trained to observe behavior, collect histories, and use assessment tools.

C: All formats (individual, group, family) have limitations; stating there are none is inconsistent with CACREP’s emphasis on critical evaluation of methods.

Thus, a major limitation in career groups is that the leader can find it difficult to meet the wide range of individual interests, making D the correct answer.

In the Counseling and Helping Relationships core area, systemic and family counseling approaches emphasize that:

A family is a system, and problems (such as parental conflict and stepfamily tension) are best understood by observing the entire system interacting.

Early sessions often focus on joining with the whole family, clarifying roles, boundaries, and interaction patterns, especially in blended families where alliances and loyalties can be complex.

Option B, seeing the family as a whole in the first session, allows the counselor to:

Directly observe parent–child and stepparent–stepchild interactions,

Hear each member’s perspective on the arguing and its impact,

Begin to restructure communication and set shared goals collaboratively.

The other options fragment the system:

A (see each child separately) misses the systemic interaction at the heart of the complaint.

C (see parents together) may be useful later but does not initially address how the conflict is affecting the children or the overall family dynamics.

D (each parent with their stepchildren) reinforces existing divisions and alliances rather than treating the family as a single integrated system.

Therefore, B is the most appropriate first-session technique for this blended family issue.

Within the CACREP Core Area of Social and Cultural Diversity, counselors are expected to demonstrate skills that allow them to work effectively with clients from diverse backgrounds. A key competency is the ability to avoid imposing personal values and to maintain an unbiased, respectful stance toward clients’ cultural identities, beliefs, and worldviews.

Ethical Bracketing (Correct Answer)Ethical bracketing refers to a counselor’s intentional process of setting aside personal values, beliefs, or biases in order to provide competent, culturally responsive services.This aligns with ethical expectations that counselors:

Maintain value neutrality,

Avoid personal value imposition, and

Uphold client autonomy, dignity, and cultural uniqueness.Ethical bracketing is specifically encouraged as an important skill when working with diverse populations.

Countertransference (Incorrect)This refers to a counselor’s emotional reactions toward the client, often based on the counselor’s unresolved issues. It is not about intentionally setting aside personal values; instead, it is a internal emotional process that must be managed during therapy.

Acculturation (Incorrect)Acculturation refers to the process of adapting to a dominant or new culture, not the counselor’s act of setting aside personal values during counseling.

Developmental Maturation (Incorrect)This refers to normal growth processes across the lifespan. It has no direct connection to value management in counseling.

Because only ethical bracketing describes consciously setting aside personal values to serve clients without bias, A is the correct answer.

In the Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice core area, counselors are expected to recognize that consultation with colleagues is an important part of maintaining ethical and competent practice. Ethical guidelines emphasize that counselors:

Seek consultation or supervision when facing ethical dilemmas,

Seek consultation when a client’s needs are beyond their current competence,

Use consultation to improve the quality of client care.

While collegial support (options A and D) can be helpful, CACREP-aligned ethical standards specifically highlight consultation as a means to clarify and uphold ethical responsibilities and strengthen clinical decision-making, not simply to vent or replace formal professional development. Thus, the best answer is C. To seek assistance with ethical obligations or professional practice.

The Counseling and Helping Relationships core area outlines the counseling process, including assessment, goal setting, and treatment planning. After the counselor has clarified the primary issue or problem, the next appropriate step is to:

Work collaboratively with the client to develop clear, mutually agreed-upon counseling goals.

Option C reflects this standard. Goal setting is the bridge between assessment and intervention. It ensures that any treatment plan or technique used is purposeful, client-centered, and aligned with the client’s priorities.

A (implement treatment) is premature without collaboratively established goals.

B (informed disclosure) should occur at the beginning of the counseling relationship, not after the problem is identified.

D (set number of sessions) may be discussed later, often in the context of goals, agency policy, or client constraints, but it is not the primary next step immediately after identifying the problem.

Therefore, C is the most appropriate next step in the intake process.

The Counseling and Helping Relationships core area emphasizes that counseling is a collaborative and ongoing process. This includes regular, purposeful feedback so that:

Counselor and client can monitor progress,

Adjust goals and interventions, and

Ensure that treatment remains aligned with the client’s needs and preferences.

Providing feedback at scheduled times throughout treatment (Option B) is consistent with CACREP-related expectations for:

Ongoing evaluation of counseling outcomes,

Use of progress monitoring, and

Maintenance of a clear, structured counseling process.

Why the others are less appropriate:

A. During the review of the treatment plan – Feedback should not be limited only to formal treatment-plan reviews; it needs to be more frequent and systematic.

C. Immediately following a behavior – Immediate feedback can be useful in behavioral interventions, but in general counseling, feedback is more effective when delivered in planned, reflective moments, not constantly after every behavior.

D. Only after the client asks for it – This is inconsistent with the counselor’s responsibility to actively facilitate the counseling process. Clients may not always know when feedback would be helpful.

Thus, B best fits standard counseling practice as reflected in CACREP-aligned training.

Within the Social and Cultural Diversity core area, counselors are expected to demonstrate multicultural competence, which includes recognizing how culture, race, ethnicity, and worldview affect clients’ experiences and concerns, and actively exploring these with clients. Ethical and culturally responsive practice involves:

Openly inviting discussion of cultural beliefs, values, and experiences that may influence the client’s presenting concerns.

Avoiding assumptions or minimizing culture as “secondary” to treatment.

Option D reflects this standard: the counselor asks the client directly about any cultural issues or beliefs that may be impacting them, honoring client expertise about their own cultural context and integrating it into case conceptualization and treatment planning.

A places the responsibility fully on the client and can lead to important cultural issues being overlooked.

B contradicts multicultural counseling principles by treating culture as unimportant.

C suggests separating concerns from culture, which ignores the fact that many problems are embedded in cultural, racial, and systemic contexts.

Therefore, D is the strategy that aligns with CACREP’s multicultural and social justice competencies.

In the Group Counseling and Group Work core area, CACREP includes knowledge of group leadership styles, including approaches grounded in person-centered (client-centered / group-centered) theory.

A group-centered leader, drawing from person-centered principles, typically:

Holds a positive view of human nature,

Believes members have an innate tendency toward growth and self-actualization,

Trusts that, given the right conditions (empathy, genuineness, unconditional positive regard), people will move in constructive directions.

This matches D: seeing people as basically positive in their intentions.

Why the others are not best:

A (pessimistic about human nature): More consistent with some strictly psychoanalytic or control-oriented approaches, not group-centered leadership.

B (seeing people as reactive to their environments): Sounds more like behavioral or social learning perspectives, not specifically group-centered.

C (focused on redirecting negative impulses): Implies a directive, control-focused stance, rather than the non-directive, facilitative stance of a group-centered leader.

Therefore, the characteristic that best fits a group-centered leader is D. Seeing people as basically positive in their intentions.

In the Research and Program Evaluation core area, counselors are expected to understand basic inferential statistics used in counseling research. When comparing three or more group means (for example, mean scores for three different treatment conditions), the standard procedure taught for the NCE is:

Use analysis of variance (ANOVA), which tests whether there are statistically significant differences among three or more group means.

ANOVA uses an F statistic internally, but the name of the procedure for comparing multiple means is “analysis of variance.”

Option A (f-test) refers to the test statistic used in ANOVA, but in counseling research courses and NCE exam language, the procedure is properly identified as ANOVA, not simply “an F-test.”

Option C (discriminant function analysis) is used to predict group membership from a set of predictors, not to test mean differences among groups.

Option D (multiple regression) evaluates the relationship between one dependent variable and multiple predictors, not the difference among three or more group means.

Therefore, when a counseling researcher wants to test for significant differences among three or more sample means, the appropriate method is B. An analysis of variance.

In the Human Growth and Development core area, CACREP includes understanding theories of human needs, such as Maslow’s hierarchy. According to this framework:

When individuals are under significant financial stress, their basic needs (e.g., housing, food, safety, security) are threatened.

Under such conditions, people are more likely to be preoccupied with survival-level concerns (physiological and safety needs) than with higher-order needs such as development, self-exploration, or complex interpersonal growth.

Options A, B, and C refer to important but higher-level needs relative to basic survival and security. In the presence of acute financial stress, clients understandably prioritize D. Survival needs.

This question falls under Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice, especially ethical standards, professional responsibility, and client rights.

Option A – Using techniques without prior trainingEthical standards require counselors to practice within the boundaries of their competence, which is based on education, training, supervised experience, and appropriate professional experience. Using counseling techniques for which the counselor has no prior training or competence violates these standards and may place clients at risk. This breaches ethical practice.

Option B – Imposing personal valuesCounselors are expected to avoid imposing their own values, attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors on clients, especially when such imposition may interfere with the counseling process or clients’ autonomy. Ethically, counselors must respect the dignity and autonomy of clients and support their ability to make their own decisions. Imposing the counselor’s personal values is clearly unethical.

Option C – Charging higher fees than others in the areaEthical codes state that counselors must establish fees that are consistent with accepted professional practices, explain fees and billing to clients in advance, and avoid exploitation of clients. However, it is not an ethical requirement that a counselor’s fees match or be similar to other providers’ fees in the area.A counselor may charge higher fees if:

The fees are clearly disclosed to the client beforehand,

The client agrees voluntarily, and

The fee structure is not exploitative or fraudulent.Therefore, simply charging higher fees than others does not, by itself, constitute an ethical violation, making C the correct answer.

Option D – Disclosing notes and records without permissionEthical standards emphasize confidentiality as a core duty. Counselors must not disclose client information, counseling notes, or records without the client’s informed consent, except under specific legal or ethical exceptions (e.g., risk of harm, court order, etc.). Disclosing records without permission generally breaches confidentiality and ethical practice.

Because A, B, and D all represent clear ethical violations, while C describes something that is not inherently unethical when done transparently and non-exploitatively, the only option that does not breach ethical counseling practice standards is C.

The Social and Cultural Diversity core area requires counselors to understand oppression, privilege, and internalized oppression, including internalized racism, sexism, and other forms of bias.

Internalized sexism occurs when individuals from a marginalized gender group adopt and believe sexist stereotypes about their own group.

In this example, the adolescent states, “Most girls are not good at math,” which reflects a negative stereotype about girls’ abilities, and then claims to be the exception (“but I am”). This is a classic presentation of internalized sexism: accepting a harmful cultural stereotype about one’s own gender group.

Gender role conflict refers to distress that arises from rigid gender-role expectations and how they conflict with a person’s behavior or self-concept; it does not necessarily involve endorsing a demeaning stereotype about one’s group. Gender identity is simply one’s internal sense of gender. Internalized privilege would refer to members of a dominant group accepting and benefiting from their unearned advantages; she is not in the privileged group in this stereotype.

Therefore, the term that best matches CACREP’s description of internalized oppression in this scenario is A. Internalized sexism.

In the Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice core area, counselors are trained to understand their roles in prevention, advocacy, and outreach within schools and communities. A rape prevention workshop at a college:

Is aimed at the general student population, not only those who have already experienced trauma.

Focuses on preventing sexual violence rather than treating its aftermath.

Represents the counselor taking services out to the community, rather than waiting for students to present individually for counseling.

This aligns directly with the concept of community outreach and primary prevention.

Option B (tertiary prevention) would involve intervening after the problem has occurred, such as counseling rape survivors to reduce long-term consequences.

Option C (gender-specific group) is not supported because the item does not specify that the group is only for one gender.

Option D (solution-focused technique) refers to a specific counseling approach, not the format or purpose of a prevention workshop.

Therefore, the best description is A. A community outreach effort.

The Group Counseling and Group Work CACREP core area requires knowledge of:

Group development stages,

Group process and dynamics, and

Leader behaviors that facilitate members’ growth and change.

Effective group leaders are trained to:

Encourage here-and-now, emotionally honest interactions,

Promote sharing of feelings and experiences (the affective level), and

Create conditions for cohesion, trust, and risk-taking.

Option analysis:

A. Call on natural leaders to take charge.This can actually interfere with group development by creating dominance, cliques, or dependency on certain members rather than developing shared responsibility.

B. Promote sharing on an affective level.This is central to group progress. When members move beyond surface-level, intellectual discussion and begin to share feelings and emotional reactions, the group becomes more therapeutic and change-oriented.

C. Link interactions to personal problems.This is a useful skill, but it tends to come after members are safely sharing at an affective level. Without emotional engagement, such linking can feel forced or overly interpretive.

D. Minimize interpretation of relationships.This runs counter to group counseling principles, where leaders often help members understand the meaning of their interactions and relationships in the group.

Thus, the action that most directly fosters progress in counseling groups is B (promote sharing on an affective level).

In the Professional Counseling Orientation and Ethical Practice core area, CACREP highlights counselors’ roles in prevention, psychoeducation, and developmental interventions, including creating and using media and materials that promote mental health, safety, and wellness.

Developmental/preventive media refers to educational materials or presentations (e.g., videos, brochures, classroom presentations, campaigns) designed to promote healthy development and prevent problems before they occur.

In option B, the counselor is facilitating the creation of a video about sexual violence to be shown in school classes. This is clearly a preventive educational tool (media) targeting a large audience to increase awareness, promote safety, and reduce risk—exactly what developmental/preventive media are used for.

Option A (compiling a referral list) is about resource referral, not the creation of media.

Option C (compiling a service report) is program evaluation/administrative documentation, not preventive media.

Option D (creating a needs assessment survey) is used to assess needs, not to directly deliver developmental/preventive content.

Therefore, the best example of a counselor preparing developmental/preventive media is B. Having students in a drama club create a video about sexual violence to show in school classes.

O D. creating a needs assessment survey to be distributed to potential clients.

Counselors are expected to understand major theoretical orientations and how they conceptualize the family and the individual in context. Within this competency, Alfred Adler is recognized as the theorist who emphasized:

The family constellation, including the structure and dynamics of the family system.

The impact of birth order (e.g., oldest, middle, youngest, only child) on personality development, beliefs, and interpersonal style.

How these early family experiences shape a person’s sense of belonging, inferiority/superiority, and lifestyle.

Adlerian theory holds that an individual’s position in the family constellation influences roles, expectations, and perceived significance, which in turn affect behavior and psychological functioning. Counselors use this understanding to conceptualize clients within their relational and familial context.

Why the other options are not correct:

B. Carl Jung focused on the collective unconscious, archetypes, and individuation—not birth order.

C. Jean Piaget is associated with cognitive development in children, not family constellation dynamics.

D. Virginia Satir worked extensively with families and communication patterns, but she is not the theorist associated with birth order as a core conceptual tool.

This aligns with the NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Area expectations that counselors understand key theorists and use family and developmental context when conceptualizing client concerns.

Ethical practice requires counselors to avoid multiple relationships when they could impair professional judgment, increase the risk of harm, or exploit the client. Serving simultaneously as both instructor and personal counselor to the same individual creates:

A power differential (grading authority and evaluative role)

Potential for role confusion

Risk that the student may feel pressured or may not be fully free in the counseling relationship

Therefore, the counselor should not enter into a counseling relationship with a current student. The ethically appropriate action is to provide a referral to another qualified mental health professional, as in Option B.

A (asking the student to wait until the course is over) still allows for a future dual relationship and does not completely remove the risk tied to the existing power dynamic.

C (scheduling counseling) directly creates a problematic multiple relationship.

D (redirecting to another faculty member) could create another dual relationship (faculty–student and counselor–client) and is not the cleanest or safest option.

Thus, the counselor should refer the student to another appropriate professional, making B the correct answer.

Within a psychodynamic framework, the counselor’s clinical work emphasizes the meaning and function of symptoms, the client’s unconscious conflicts, and the relational patterns that are re-enacted in the counseling relationship. Treatment planning in this approach relies heavily on understanding how the client is attached to their symptoms (e.g., how symptoms may protect against painful feelings or maintain familiar relational roles) and on using the therapeutic alliance as the primary vehicle for change.

Option D reflects this: examining the client’s attachment to symptoms and the quality of the therapeutic alliance is consistent with psychodynamic treatment planning, where the counselor links symptoms to deeper emotional and relational processes and uses insight and the counseling relationship to facilitate change.

A focuses on diagnostic classification using the DSM-5-TR, which is important for diagnosis but not specific to a psychodynamic understanding or treatment planning process.

B refers to “reinforcement learning,” a behavioral concept not central to psychodynamic work.

C describes a general evidence-based stance but does not capture the distinct psychodynamic emphasis on symptom meaning and the therapeutic relationship.

This aligns with the NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas expectation that counselors integrate theoretical orientation into conceptualization and treatment planning, using the counseling relationship and client insight as core components of psychodynamic treatment.

Feminist counseling emphasizes how social, political, and cultural structures contribute to client distress, especially for women and other marginalized groups. A core idea is that personal problems are often rooted in systemic oppression, and therefore counseling is not only about individual change but also about social transformation.

Option C reflects this: feminist counselors view individual counseling as a potential tool of social change by helping clients recognize oppressive systems, develop critical consciousness, and become empowered to challenge inequities in their lives and communities.

A focuses narrowly on the mother relationship, which is more aligned with psychodynamic approaches, not feminist theory.

B is incorrect because feminist counseling explicitly recognizes that women do not have full social equality.

D conflicts with feminist principles, which stress self-empowerment and mutual empowerment, rather than empowerment being bestowed by a more powerful group (e.g., men).

This fits within Areas of Clinical Focus, where counselors must understand theoretical orientations that address power, oppression, gender roles, and social justice in clinical work.

In the Counseling Skills and Interventions domain, counselors are expected to know and apply core cognitive-behavioral strategies, including how to help clients and families learn and practice new behaviors.

Modeling (B) is a technique in which the counselor (or another family member) demonstrates a desired behavior, allowing others to observe and then imitate it. This approach is rooted in social learning principles: people learn new behaviors by watching others perform them and seeing the positive outcomes that follow. In family counseling, modeling can be used to teach communication skills, problem-solving, emotional expression, or conflict-resolution behaviors.

The other options are related but not as directly focused on teaching new behaviors through demonstration:

Intensification (A) is more associated with structural family therapy, where the therapist heightens or intensifies interactions to promote change in family structure.

Reinforcement of incompatible behaviors (C) is a behavior modification method that increases behaviors that cannot occur simultaneously with the unwanted behavior. It shapes behavior but does not inherently rely on demonstration.

Extinction (D) reduces a behavior by removing the reinforcement that maintains it.

While several behavioral techniques can support change, modeling is specifically designed to help family members develop and learn new behaviors by observing them in action.

Counselors are expected to understand how to convert between different score scales (standard scores and raw scores) using the logic of z scores.

Step 1: Find the z score of the student’s standard score.

Standard-score mean = 76

Standard-score standard deviation = 7

Student’s score = 69

z=X−μσ=69−767=−77=−1z = \frac{X - \mu}{\sigma} = \frac{69 - 76}{7} = \frac{-7}{7} = -1z=σX−μ​=769−76​=7−7​=−1

So the student is one standard deviation below the mean (z = -1).

Step 2: Convert that z score back to the original raw-score distribution.

Original mean = 25

Original standard deviation = 5

Xraw=μraw+z⋅σraw=25+(−1)⋅5=25−5=20X_{\text{raw}} = \mu_{\text{raw}} + z \cdot \sigma_{\text{raw}} = 25 + (-1) \cdot 5 = 25 - 5 = 20Xraw​=μraw​+z⋅σraw​=25+(−1)⋅5=25−5=20

So the corresponding raw score is 20, which is option D.

This kind of conversion is part of basic testing and measurement knowledge that supports accurate assessment and communication of test results.

Professional practice and ethics expectations include understanding ethical responsibilities when counselors participate in or conduct research. In a collaborative research project, while all researchers share ethical obligations, the primary responsibility for ensuring the protection of participants’ legal and ethical rights lies with the principal investigator (PI).

The PI is responsible for:

Ensuring informed consent procedures

Safeguarding confidentiality and data security

Complying with institutional and legal requirements

Overseeing the ethical conduct of all aspects of the project

Option B (author of the proposal) does not necessarily have ongoing responsibility if they are not the PI.

Option C (the counselor who agrees to accept responsibility) is too vague; specific responsibility lies with designated roles and typically centers on the PI.

Option D (state licensure board) regulates professional conduct broadly but does not manage the day-to-day ethical implementation of a specific research project.

Therefore, the correct answer is A, the principal investigator.

When there is a significant lack of bonding or secure attachment between a caregiver and a child, one major consequence is often low levels of stimulation, interaction, and responsive caregiving. This can lead to:

Inhibited cognitive growth (e.g., delayed language, problem-solving, and conceptual skills).

Inhibited emotional growth, including difficulty regulating emotions and forming relationships.

These developmental limitations directly affect school readiness and academic performance, making A the best answer.

The other options describe possible effects of attachment problems but are less directly and broadly tied to academic underperformance:

B. Indiscriminate attachments to adults – seen in some severe attachment disturbances, but this focuses more on social behaviors than academic performance per se.

C. Decreased experience with attending behaviors – could play a role but is more narrow and not the primary developmental factor emphasized in research.

D. Decreased practice with delaying gratifications – relates more to impulse control and behavior, which can affect school, but the core academic underperformance is more strongly linked to global cognitive and emotional inhibition due to low early stimulation.

Within Areas of Clinical Focus, counselors are expected to understand how early attachment and caregiving environments influence later functioning, including academic achievement, and to recognize how disruptions in bonding can affect a child’s cognitive and emotional development.

With retired and older adults, group counseling often benefits from life review and reminiscence, where members share and process past experiences, roles, accomplishments, regrets, and transitions. This helps with identity integration, meaning-making, grief, and adjustment to retirement, so a primary focus on personal reminiscences is particularly appropriate. Thus, Option D is correct.

Option A (more structured activities) can be useful, but structure alone is not the central developmental task for retired individuals; the question asks what the counselor should do, pointing to primary focus, not just a technique.

Option B is contrary to good practice: pre-group screening is recommended for most counseling groups, including those with older adults, to ensure appropriate membership and fit.

Option C (developing new humanistic coping skills) is not wrong in spirit, but it is overly vague and does not highlight the unique value of life review and reminiscence in later-life group counseling.

NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas emphasize that effective group interventions are adapted to the developmental stage and life tasks of the population served. For retired persons, structured reminiscence and life review are evidence-based, developmentally appropriate group foci.

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) results from prenatal exposure to alcohol and is characterized by a pattern of:

Central nervous system (CNS) abnormalities

Growth deficiencies

Characteristic facial features

Cognitive, behavioral, and learning difficulties

These effects are considered permanent and irreversible, making Option A correct. While supportive services and interventions can improve functioning and quality of life, the underlying damage does not “heal” or disappear over time [as consistently noted in medical and developmental literature, e.g., CDC and pediatric guidelines].

Why the other options are incorrect:

B. “The effects … are mental rather than physical.”FAS includes both physical and neurodevelopmental effects—growth deficits, facial anomalies, and CNS involvement—not just “mental” effects.

C. “FAS can develop through breastfeeding.”FAS is specifically caused by alcohol exposure in utero; breastfeeding does not cause FAS, although alcohol can affect the infant in other ways.

D. “The children with FAS tend to have average IQs.”Many individuals with FAS have below-average IQ, learning disabilities, and executive functioning deficits. Average IQ is not characteristic of the syndrome as a whole.

Within the NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas, counselors are expected to understand key features of developmental and neurobehavioral conditions such as FAS to inform assessment, referral, and appropriate support planning.

Within Professional Practice and Ethics, counselors are expected to monitor and evaluate their own effectiveness, seek feedback, and engage in ongoing professional development to improve their practice.

In this scenario, the counselor:

Asks for anonymous written comments after each session

Focuses specifically on the counselor’s own behaviors in the group

Takes steps to protect confidentiality (having comments typed by a third party)

This clearly frames the feedback as a tool for the counselor to evaluate and improve their own performance, which is an example of self-evaluation.

Group stage evaluation (A) would focus on where the group is developmentally (forming, storming, norming, etc.), not primarily on the counselor’s behavior.

Outcome evaluation (B) assesses whether client or group goals are being met (symptom reduction, improved functioning), not how the counselor acted.

Process gradient scaling (D) is not what’s being described here; this is not a formal scaling or rating method of session process variables.

Therefore, the process is best understood as self-evaluation, making C the correct answer.

In the Counseling Skills and Interventions domain, behavioral approaches emphasize observable, measurable behavior change, and the use of practice outside of sessions to generalize and maintain gains. In behavioral group counseling, key principles include:

Setting specific, individualized behavioral goals

Defining goals in observable, measurable terms

Using homework or between-session assignments to practice new behaviors in real-life situations

Option A directly reflects this: group members have individualized objectives to work on between sessions, which is a hallmark of behavioral work and supports skill acquisition and generalization.

B is incorrect because behavioral methods often use more than just verbal interaction (e.g., modeling, role-playing, behavioral rehearsal, reinforcement, feedback systems).

C is partially true that goals should be in performance terms, but the requirement that each member have multiple goals is not a core principle and may even dilute focus.

D contradicts behavioral theory, which holds that environmental factors strongly influence behavior; behavioral counseling explicitly considers and modifies environmental contingencies.

Thus, A best reflects a principle of behavioral group counseling.

In assessment and testing, counselors must understand how different standardized scoring systems relate to one another in a normal distribution so they can interpret results accurately for clients.

A z score of 1 is one standard deviation above the mean. In a normal distribution, this corresponds to about the 84th percentile.

A T score typically has a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10. One standard deviation above the mean (z = 1) equals a T score of 60.

A percentile rank of 84 also corresponds to being about one standard deviation above the mean in a normal distribution.

So options A, B, and C all describe roughly the same relative position in the distribution: one standard deviation above the mean.

A stanine scale ranges from 1 to 9, with a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of about 2. A stanine of 5 represents the average range (around the mean), not one standard deviation above it. A score one standard deviation above the mean would fall closer to stanine 7, not 5.

Therefore, stanine of 5 (D) is not equivalent to the other three scores and is the correct answer.

When a client brings up assisted suicide, the counselor is dealing with a situation that involves serious ethical, legal, and clinical considerations. The NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas emphasize that counselors must know and follow applicable laws, adhere to ethical standards, and seek supervision or consultation when facing complex or high-risk situations.

The best first step is Option A: seek professional and legal consultation/supervision. This helps the counselor clarify:

Legal requirements in their jurisdiction regarding assisted suicide.

Ethical obligations related to client safety, autonomy, and confidentiality.

Appropriate clinical responses and documentation.

Option B (maintain confidentiality) is important but not an action step and may need to be reconsidered if there is clear risk of self-harm. Option C (inform the family) could violate confidentiality without proper legal/ethical grounding. Option D (review palliative medications) is outside the counselor’s scope. Consulting first allows the counselor to proceed in an informed, ethical, and legally sound manner.

The presentation described—rapid and significant weight loss (20 lb in one month), restrictive dieting, excessive exercise, possible purging after meals (bathroom use), and functional impairment (missing work due to fatigue)—strongly suggests a severe eating disorder with medical risk (e.g., risk of electrolyte imbalance, cardiac complications, severe malnutrition).

Within treatment planning, counselors are expected to:

Assess risk and severity,

Determine the least restrictive but safe level of care,

Refer to specialized services when problems exceed their scope or when intensive medical and psychological treatment is required.

Given the combination of rapid weight loss, ongoing disordered behaviors, and clear impairment, the safest and most appropriate choice is Option D: referral to an eating disorder inpatient facility, where the client can receive:

Medical monitoring and stabilization,

Nutritional rehabilitation,

Intensive specialized psychotherapy.

Why the other options are not appropriate as the best course:

A. Crisis unit – Typically used for imminent danger such as acute suicidality or psychosis; while eating disorders are serious, the scenario calls for specialized eating-disorder treatment, not just general crisis stabilization.

B. Peer support group – Helpful as an adjunct, but inadequate as the primary level of care for a case with this level of severity and medical risk.

C. Outpatient therapy group – More suitable for mild to moderate cases or for those stabilized medically; the client described likely requires a higher level of care first.

This reflects the Treatment Planning work behavior: using clinical information to select an appropriate level of care, prioritizing client safety, and coordinating referrals to intensive or specialized services when indicated.

Within Professional Practice and Ethics, counselors are expected to be aware of how their words and behaviors can harm clients, especially in multicultural and diversity contexts. A microaggression is a subtle, often unintentional, verbal or behavioral slight that communicates negative, dismissive, or stereotypical messages toward individuals from marginalized or underrepresented groups. Even when the counselor does not intend harm, microaggressions can damage the therapeutic alliance, invalidate the client’s experience, and create an unsafe counseling environment.

Ethical and professional standards emphasize that counselors must monitor their own biases and communication, recognize when a microaggression may have occurred, and take responsibility for repair in the relationship.

The other options are not best described as unintentional offenses toward the client in this sense:

Countertransference (A) is the counselor’s emotional reaction to the client, often rooted in the counselor’s own history. It can lead to problems, but it is primarily about the counselor’s internal process.

Redirection (B) is a counseling technique, such as gently shifting focus, and is not inherently offensive.

Introjection (D) is a defense mechanism in which a person absorbs others’ beliefs or attitudes as their own; it describes client dynamics, not counselor offense.

Recognizing and preventing microaggressions is a core expectation under Professional Practice and Ethics, especially in working with diverse populations.

During intake, assessment, and diagnosis, counselors are expected to collaborate with clients, involve them actively in understanding what is being assessed, and explain the purpose and implications of diagnosis. This includes:

Using the client’s self-report as an essential source of data.

Inviting questions and feedback about symptoms and diagnostic impressions.

Promoting transparency and shared understanding rather than a “secret” label.

Therefore, involving the client actively (A) best reflects ethical and competent diagnostic practice.

B. Conceal the diagnosis from the client is inconsistent with informed consent and collaborative practice.

C. Discuss treatment alternatives is important but is more central to treatment planning after diagnosis, not to the diagnostic process itself.

D. Accept any previous diagnosis without reassessment ignores the responsibility to re-evaluate current functioning, context, and symptoms.

This fits NBCC expectations that counselors use diagnosis thoughtfully and collaboratively as part of a larger assessment process.

This client is:

In advanced age with declining health and a recent heart attack.

Expressing fears about dying alone and questions about how much time he has left.

Reflecting on life choices and losses (“all he did to provide for his family”).

These features point strongly to end-of-life concerns, such as mortality, meaning, unresolved feelings, and how to live meaningfully in the time remaining. Thus, A. End-of-life issues is the most central and clinically indicated focus.

Why the others are secondary or less indicated:

B. Repairing family relationships – while potentially helpful, he states he has “accepted” those losses; that may be explored within end-of-life work, but the primary clinical task is addressing his fears and meaning-making around death.

C. Reviewing will and health care directives – important practically, but this is more of a legal/administrative task than the core counseling focus.

D. Developing and expanding support networks – can be part of the work, especially given fears of dying alone, but it is one element within the broader focus on end-of-life adjustment rather than the central organizing theme.

NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas include attending to developmental and life-stage issues, including older adulthood and end-of-life, and helping clients cope with illness, mortality, and existential concerns.

Career construction counseling (Savickas) is a narrative, meaning-based approach to career development. Its central activity is helping clients tell, explore, and organize their life stories in a way that reveals recurring life themes and preferred ways of being in the world. These themes then guide career choices and roles that feel coherent and meaningful.

Thus, option C. Identifying life themes is correct, as it captures the core narrative task of career construction counseling.

A. Analyzing temperament fits more with trait-based or psychometric approaches.

B. Documenting experience may occur, but it is secondary to making sense of those experiences through themes.

D. Practicing interview skills is a useful career skill-building task but is not the central activity of career construction counseling.

NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas expect counselors to understand major career theories and approaches, including narrative and constructivist models that emphasize life themes, meaning-making, and storytelling in career development.

Holland’s theory of vocational personalities describes the Enterprising type as someone who enjoys leading, persuading, selling, influencing others, and seeking status or power. These individuals often gravitate toward roles involving management, politics, sales, or entrepreneurship.

Option A (Enterprising) matches the description of a person who enjoys verbal persuasion to gain power and social status.

Realistic (B) types prefer hands-on, practical activities.

Conventional (C) types prefer structured, orderly, detail-oriented tasks.

Social (D) types enjoy helping, teaching, and supporting others more than seeking power or status.

Understanding Holland’s types is part of career and vocational conceptualization, which falls under Areas of Clinical Focus in the NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas.

In solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), counselors emphasize:

Exceptions – times when the problem is less severe or not present.

Future-oriented, goal-focused questions.

Client strengths and what already works.

Option A, referring to exceptions, points directly to a hallmark SFBT technique: the counselor shows curiosity about when the problem does not occur or is reduced, helping clients identify what they are doing differently in those moments so they can build on those exceptions. (The stem’s wording about “prominent” is less precise, but “exceptions” is the key SFBT concept here.)

B. Miracle question labeled as an emotional-focused coping strategy mixes an SFBT tool (miracle question) with an inaccurate label; the miracle question is about imagining a preferred future, not simply an emotion-focused coping label.

C. Understanding issues within or outside of the client’s control is more characteristic of other cognitive or problem-solving approaches, not specifically SFBT.

D. In-depth views of distress is more consistent with insight-oriented or process-focused therapies, whereas SFBT de-emphasizes detailed exploration of problems and focuses instead on solutions.

NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas expect counselors to be able to apply interventions consistent with their theoretical orientation, and for SFBT that includes using exception questions, miracle questions, and scaling to help clients move toward solutions.

Within the Core Counseling Attributes domain, counselors are expected to demonstrate an ability to accurately understand and reflect the client’s emotional experience. Empathy involves communicating back to the client an accurate awareness of their internal world, especially their feelings, meanings, and emotional nuances.

Option A reflects this essential skill: the counselor expresses an understanding of what the client is feeling, allowing the client to feel heard, validated, and emotionally understood. This is central to building the therapeutic relationship and promoting client growth.

Why the other options are incorrect:

B. Nod their head frequently: This is a nonverbal attending skill, but nodding alone does not establish empathy or convey an understanding of the client’s emotional experience.

C. Open posture: Although helpful for rapport and presence, posture alone does not demonstrate emotional understanding and therefore is not empathy by itself.

D. Provide a detailed summary: Summarizing is a useful skill, but a detailed summary may focus on content rather than the client’s emotional experience, and therefore does not fully represent empathy.

The NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas emphasize that empathy involves accurately perceiving and clearly communicating the client’s emotional state, making option A the correct answer.

In assessment, counselors are expected to understand basic statistics used to interpret test scores. The standard deviation is the measure that indicates, on average, how far individual scores fall from the mean of a distribution. It is a key index of variability around the average.

When the standard deviation is small, scores cluster closely around the mean.

When it is large, scores are more spread out.

Thus, option C. Standard deviation is correct.

Why the others are incorrect:

A. Correlation coefficient measures the degree and direction of relationship between two variables, not the average distance from the mean.

B. Range is the difference between the highest and lowest score; it is a simple measure of spread but does not reflect the average distance of scores from the mean.

D. Standard score (e.g., z-score, T-score) is a transformed score that indicates how far an individual score lies from the mean in standard deviation units, but it is not the name of the variability index itself.

Knowledge of how to interpret scores using concepts like the mean and standard deviation is part of Intake, Assessment and Diagnosis, as counselors must interpret test results accurately to inform case understanding and decision-making.

When assessing intellectual disability, severity is determined primarily by adaptive functioning, particularly in conceptual, social, and practical domains, rather than by etiology or isolated mental status features. For a seven-year-old, the counselor would consider how the child:

Understands and uses concepts (e.g., time, quantity, basic academic skills).

Solves problems and learns new information appropriate to their developmental level.

Option D. Concept formation aligns with this focus on conceptual functioning, which is central to determining the severity of intellectual disability.

A. Pressured speech and B. Agitation are more associated with mood or anxiety disorders (e.g., mania, acute distress) rather than severity of intellectual disability.

C. Genetic factors may help explain the cause of the disability but do not determine its severity.

The NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas emphasize accurate use of diagnostic criteria and understanding that severity ratings for intellectual disability are based on everyday functioning in key domains, not just on symptoms or etiology.

John Gottman’s research on couples identified specific negative interaction patterns that strongly predict divorce and marital distress, often called the “Four Horsemen”:3

Criticism

Defensiveness

Contempt

Stonewalling

From the options provided, criticism (C), defensiveness (A), and stonewalling (B) are three of these four. Anger, however, is not one of the Four Horsemen and, by itself, is not the direct predictor identified by Gottman. Couples can experience and express anger without necessarily being on a path toward divorce, especially if anger is expressed in a constructive, regulated way.3

Therefore, Option D (anger) is not the specific Gottman-identified predictor and is the correct answer.

Why the other options are predictors:

A. Defensiveness – Involves blaming, making excuses, and refusing to take responsibility, which undermines problem-solving and connection.

B. Stonewalling – Emotional withdrawal and shutting down during conflict, which blocks repair and connection.

C. Criticism – Attacks the partner’s character or personality (e.g., “You always…” “You never…”), not just specific behaviors.3

Within the Areas of Clinical Focus work behavior area, counselors who work with couples are expected to understand relationship dynamics and empirically derived predictors of marital distress, using this knowledge to guide assessment and intervention.

Within Counseling Skills and Interventions, counselors must understand how specific theories (such as reality therapy) are applied in practice, including the use of concepts like positive addiction.

In reality therapy (developed by William Glasser), positive addictions refer to healthy, constructive activities that a person engages in regularly (for example, running, meditation, or creative pursuits) which:

Enhance psychological strength and self-esteem

Support a sense of competence and control

Contribute to personal growth and self-actualization

The primary purpose of encouraging positive addiction, especially with adolescents, is to help them develop life patterns that support growth, responsibility, and a stronger, more confident sense of self—essentially encouraging movement toward self-actualization and a belief in their own worth and potential.

A. Increase physical fitness may be a side benefit (e.g., with exercise-based activities) but is not the central counseling purpose.

B. Help the client abandon negative addictions can be an important outcome, but the core rationale in reality therapy is to build new, healthy patterns that support growth rather than focusing solely on stopping negative behavior.

C. Help clarify new support systems can be useful, but this is not the primary definition or goal of positive addiction.

The central therapeutic aim is to foster healthy, growth-oriented habits that strengthen the self and support self-actualization, making D the best answer.

The phrase in the question is the standard definition of cognitive style—the characteristic way an individual perceives, processes, organizes, and uses information. This includes preferred ways of learning, problem-solving, and decision-making.

C. Cognitive style therefore correctly names individual differences in how people comprehend, store, and use information.

The other options are related but distinct concepts:

A. Divergent thinking refers to generating many possible solutions or ideas from a single starting point (often associated with creativity and brainstorming).

D. Convergent thinking involves narrowing down options to find a single correct solution (often used in logic or standard problem-solving).

B. Creativity generally refers to the ability to produce novel and useful ideas or products, not specifically the stable way a person processes information.

Understanding cognitive styles is part of the Areas of Clinical Focus, since it helps counselors conceptualize clients’ learning, problem-solving, and information-processing patterns, and adapt interventions accordingly.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy views the mind as composed of multiple “parts” (such as protectors and exiles) and a core Self that is calm, compassionate, and centered. Even when working with an individual (rather than an actual family), the counselor:

Helps the client identify and get to know different internal parts,

Notices which parts become activated or “take over” in specific contexts, such as relationships,

Supports the client in unblending from these parts and relating to them from Self-leadership.

Option B best captures this process: the counselor facilitates identification and visualization of parts that are taking over in the relationship, so the client can understand how these parts influence their reactions and choices with others.

A is more aligned with traditional family-of-origin or Bowenian/systemic exploration and is less specific to IFS’s internal “parts” model.

C is not required in IFS; the “family” being worked with is the internal system, not necessarily the external family.

D is partially true in a broad sense (IFS does recognize internal conflicts and wounds), but it is too general and does not specify the key IFS intervention of working explicitly with “parts.”

This question falls under Counseling Skills and Interventions, since it focuses on how a counselor would apply a specific therapeutic model in practice with a client experiencing relational difficulties.

Within diagnostic work, counselors must distinguish between eating disorders by identifying core diagnostic features. Anorexia nervosa is characterized by restriction of energy intake leading to significantly low body weight, a disturbance in the way one’s body weight or shape is experienced, and, critically, an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even when underweight. That intense fear is central to both the client’s experience and the clinical diagnosis, making Option B correct.

Option A (repeatedly regurgitating food for at least one month) aligns more with rumination disorder, not anorexia nervosa.

Option C is incorrect: anorexia is more frequently associated with higher-income, industrialized societies, not predominantly low-income countries.

Option D (binge eating) is more characteristic of bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder; while some people with anorexia (binge-eating/purging type) may binge, it is not the defining feature.

Correctly identifying hallmark symptoms like fear of weight gain reflects the NBCC Intake, Assessment and Diagnosis expectation that counselors accurately recognize and differentiate mental disorders when formulating diagnoses and treatment plans.

Behavioral approaches are grounded in the assumption that most human behavior, including maladaptive behavior, is learned through principles such as conditioning, reinforcement, modeling, and environmental contingencies. From this perspective:

Problem behaviors are acquired in the same way as other behaviors (through learning).

Therefore, they can be modified or unlearned using the same learning principles.

Option B directly reflects this core assumption.

A is inaccurate because behavior therapy typically focuses directly on observable behavior, not on uncovering deep “underlying causes” in a psychodynamic sense.

C is the opposite of what behavior therapy proposes; behavior therapy is built on the idea that learning principles are effective in changing behavior.

D is incorrect because behavior therapy uses many techniques (e.g., exposure, systematic desensitization, skills training, reinforcement strategies) tailored to specific problems and clients.

Understanding major theoretical orientations, including behavior therapy and how they conceptualize the development and modification of maladaptive behaviors, is part of the Areas of Clinical Focus within the Counselor Work Behavior Areas.