Online NCE-ABE Questions Video

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.

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.

Counselors using assessments must understand basic statistics, including correlation, to interpret test data appropriately. A correlation coefficient (r) ranges from −1.00 to +1.00 and reflects the strength and direction of a linear relationship between two variables.

A correlation of 0 (option A) indicates no linear relationship between the variables—knowing one gives no information about predicting the other in a straight-line fashion.

−1.00 (B) indicates a perfect negative linear relationship: as one variable increases, the other decreases in a perfectly predictable way.

+1.00 (C) indicates a perfect positive linear relationship: as one variable increases, the other also increases in a perfectly predictable way.

Unable to determine (D) is incorrect because the coefficient itself does provide this information.

Therefore, 0 represents a complete lack of linear relationship, making A the correct answer.

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.