Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Reflective listening is a core counseling skill that supports effective communication in mental and behavioral health.Understanding how this skill changes with practice is important for designing scalable training and feedback systems.In this paper, we examine longitudinal patterns in 6,196 trainee responses collected during a three-week counseling training study.We model responses as trajectories in semantic embedding space and use residual embeddings with similarity-based metrics to quantify week-to-week change.Our analyses reveal systematic shifts over time, including increased semantic alignment and reduced variability, consistent with stabilization in trainees' language.We further show that these trajectory patterns are accompanied by modest linguistic shifts relevant to reflective counseling practice.Together, these findings provide a trajectorybased view of how reflective listening practice changes over repeated assignment.
Authors: Dhruvil Thummar, Verónica Pérez-Rosas
Institution: Texas State University
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7166863733