The Gerontologist: Counselor and Coach

Effective communication is the core of every helping relationship. Trained and experienced gerontology counselors bring skillful listening, the gift of reframing, the ability to suspend judgment, experience with confidentiality and ethics, and the ability to seek solutions and think of possibilities to the evolving field of life coach. Therefore, whether the older client is seeking psychological counseling or a personal evolution and ways to live their life more fully, the gerontologist is the most suitable professional to address their concerns. If practitioners are to meet the rapidly increasing needs of Baby Boomers, academic programs need to train them to fill the role of both counselor and coach. Clients will make the determination of who is the best fit for their current concern.     

Geography in school and college

Joe Russell Whitaker. Geography in School and College, Bureau of Publications. George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1948 pp. 116 $1.80     

News and notes from the state association

This study found that the auditors with initially extreme attitudes were affected differently by a speaker's evidence than were those with initially neutral attitudes and suggests that the role which evidence plays in persuasion may be related to the particular “game” a communicator plays with his audience.     

Intellectual self-mutilation

[The] business man is generous to a fault, but one thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers and journalists: if we're going to pay them our good money, they‘ve got to help us by selling efficiency and whooping it up for rational prosperity? And when it comes to these blab-mouth, fault-finding, pessimistic, cynical University teachers, let me tell you that during this golden coming year it's just as much our duty to bring influence to have these cusses fired as it is to sell all the real estate and gather in all the good shekels we can. Sinclair Lewis. Babbitt.     

To Catch a Liar: Challenges for Research in Lie Detection Training

Can we train people to detect deception? It is the contention of this article that communication scholars should learn how to train law enforcement professionals on how to detect high stake lies, like those faced by police, judges, customs officials, immigration officials, and so forth. It is proposed that in order to know whether we can train or should bother to train people to detect deception, each training study must meet 6 challenges: (1) relevance, (2) high stakes, (3) proper training, (4) proper testing, (5) generalizability across situations, and (6) generalizability over time. Our quantitative review of the literature suggests that training does significantly raise lie detection accuracy rates. Meta-analytic findings indicate a mean effect size of r = .20 across 20 (11 published studies) paired comparisons of lie detection training versus the control group (i.e., those without some type of training). It should be noted that the majority of the studies that attempt to train lie detectors fall short on many of the above challenges. Current research in lie detection training may actually underestimate the ability to train lie detectors due to the stimulus materials employed in most experiments.