NCE-ABE Exam Dumps - National Counselor Examination

Family counseling is grounded in systems theory, which views the family as an interconnected unit where each member’s behavior affects the entire system. When a counselor helps one member become more assertive, they operate from the assumption that a change in one part of the system will influence changes in other parts of the system.

Therefore, option B is correct: changing one family member’s behavior will change the behavior of other family members. It does not mean everyone will necessarily become more assertive (so A is too specific and inaccurate), nor does it assume assertiveness is purely individual and unreachable through family work (C). It also does not require that all family members agree to the change before it can occur (D).

NBCC-aligned work behaviors expect counselors to understand systemic dynamics and recognize that interventions aimed at a single family member can ripple through the entire family system.

When clients are described as vocationally immature, they typically lack sufficient awareness of the world of work, have limited understanding of career options, and often have not yet developed realistic views of themselves in relation to occupations. Within the NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas, career-focused practice emphasizes meeting clients where they are developmentally and supplying the foundational information and experiences needed before moving into more advanced planning tasks.

For vocationally immature clients, the appropriate emphasis is on providing occupational information—helping them learn about different types of work, training requirements, work environments, typical duties, earnings, and opportunities for advancement. This information reduces confusion, increases readiness for decision-making, and supports later steps like goal setting and occupational choice, making Option B correct.

Option A (Identify occupational choices) is premature if the client does not yet understand the range of possibilities.

Option C (Evaluate past career-related decisions) is not central when the person has made few or no meaningful career decisions.

Option D (Establish long-term goals) is also a later-stage task; vocationally immature clients often struggle with long-range planning until they have more information and self-understanding.

NBCC work expectations related to clinical focus in career counseling stress using developmentally appropriate interventions—building awareness and knowledge first, then progressing toward decision-making and long-term planning.

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.

Behavior therapy is grounded in learning theory and focuses on observable behavior and the environmental conditions that maintain it. A key procedure is functional analysis, often described in terms of A–B–C:

A – Antecedents: What happens before the behavior?

B – Behavior: The specific, observable behavior.

C – Consequences: What happens after the behavior that might reinforce or punish it?

Option D, mapping antecedents and consequences, directly reflects this core emphasis of behavior therapy—understanding what triggers behaviors and what maintains them, so that interventions can be designed to change environmental contingencies and support new, adaptive behaviors.

A (collaborative relationship) is important in almost all approaches but is not a unique emphasis of behavior therapy.

B (personal awareness) aligns more with insight-oriented or humanistic approaches.

C (moral behavior) does not reflect standard behavior therapy focus, which is on learning processes, not moral judgment.

Mastery of theoretical orientations like behavior therapy fits under Areas of Clinical Focus, where counselors must know how different models conceptualize problems and guide intervention choices.

Within the Intake, Assessment and Diagnosis domain, counselors are expected to understand different types of assessment instruments, including their purpose and limitations. Projective techniques (such as the Rorschach Inkblot Test or Thematic Apperception Test) are designed to provide information about unconscious processes, personality dynamics, and underlying conflicts by eliciting open-ended responses to ambiguous stimuli.

These techniques are not considered strictly objective (eliminating A). They often involve clinical interpretation.

They are not designed primarily to predict future difficulties (eliminating B), though they may contribute to a broader understanding of risk.

While they can inform hypotheses about contributing factors, they do not directly “reflect the causes” of current problems in a definitive way (eliminating C).

Their central theoretical purpose is to tap unconscious feelings, motives, and conflicts, making D the correct answer.

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.

In the Group Counseling and Group Work core area, CACREP expects counselors to understand different group leadership styles, including democratic, authoritarian, and laissez-faire.

A laissez-faire leader is characterized by minimal direction, low structure, and very little intervention, allowing group members to largely manage their own processes and decisions.

In this scenario, such a leader would not step in to decide the goal (A or C) or actively facilitate group problem-solving (B). Instead, they would allow the members to continue interacting until they naturally reach some resolution, which aligns with D.

Thus, D. Let the two group members continue until some form of resolution had been achieved best reflects a laissez-faire leadership style.

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.