Addiction Recovery: 12-Step Programs and Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology

This article provides the helping professional with an overview of treatment issues referred to as spiritual by those recovering from alcohol and drug addictions through 12-step programs like that of Alcoholics Anonymous. Conflicts between academically trained helping professionals and researchers, and those advocating spiritually oriented treatment programs are reviewed. Spiritual aspects of recovery may be foreign constructs for the academically trained helping professional. The goal of this article is to discuss these spiritual constructs in terms of cognitive-behavioral psychology, a knowledge base common to most professionally trained helpers.     

A Comparison of Verbal Response Modes Used by Master's-Level Career Counselors and Other Helpers

The verbal response modes of 4 master's-level career counselors, each in middle sessions of career counseling with 2 adult clients, were categorized and compared with those of other types of helpers. Career counselors primarily used information, direct guidance, paraphrase, and closed question. In comparison with data presented in Hill, Thames, and Rardin (1979) Toro (1986) and Levy (1989) career counselors were most similar to Albert Ellis, mental health professionals, psychologists on radio talk shows, and family practice lawyers in that all frequently used information and direct guidance. They were most dissimilar to Carl Rogers, who used more paraphrase, interpretation, and confrontation.     

Coping,life stress,and psychological and somatic distress

Theory and research have focused on the relationships among coping processes, stressful life events, and psychological and physical distress. This study was designed to examine the relationship of stressful life events and three styles of coping—emotion oriented, task oriented, and avoidance oriented—to physical and psychological distress. Questionnaires measuring coping styles, recent life stressors, and both physical symptoms and psychological symptoms were completed by 205 undergraduates (101 males and 104 females). It was hypothesized that task-oriented coping would negatively predict distress and that emotion-oriented coping would positively predict distress. The relationships of two types of avoidance-oriented coping (distraction and social diversion) to distress were also examined. Multiple regression analyses revealed that task-oriented coping was negatively related to distress, but only for males. Emotion-oriented coping was significantly positively predictive of distress for both males and females. The two subcomponents of avoidance-oriented coping—distraction and social diversion—were differentially related to measures of distress. Life event stress positively predicted distress, both as an independent contributor of variance and in interaction with several coping styles.     

Personality Characteristics of Achieving and Underachieving High Ability Senior Women

This study utilized the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and the Gough Adjective Check List (ACL) in an investigation of the relationship between personality characteristics and academic achievement in gifted university women. Several scales of the CPI differentiated achievers from underachievers. In addition, achieving and underachieving women described themselves differently on the ACL. As defined in this study, the achieving women were more highly socialized than the underachieving women.     

Expectancy Accessibility and the Influence of Outcome Expectancies on Adolescent Smokeless Tobacco Use

This study investigated the moderating influence of expectancy accessibility on the relation between outcome expectancies and drug use intentions. Specifically, it was hypothesized that expectancies made temporarily more accessible would predict smokeless tobacco intentions to a greater degree than would less accessible expectancies. In addition, it was anticipated that expectancies regarding positive outcomes of smokeless tobacco use would be better predictors of intention than would expectancies about negative outcomes. Results partially supported the accessibility hypothesis, but this effect occurred for positive outcome expectancies only. In addition, the anticipated prepotency of positive over negative expectancies in predicting drug use intentions was strongly supported. These findings are consistent with theories of problem behavior which differentiate between positive and negative outcome expectancies and which postulate that accessibility of expectancies plays an important role in expectancy-behavior relations.     

Use of techniques promoting students' self-determination: Effects on students' analytic problem-solving skills

Based on self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 1987, 1991), we assessed the effect of controlling strategies and restricted choice options on students' performance on analytic reason problems. Subjects in the controlling-directives condition were told by their teacher that a given strategy was the way students should solve a set of analytical problems. Although subjects in the noncontrolling-directives condition were taught the same strategy, they were encouraged to use any strategy they chose to solve the identical problems. The results indicated, as predicted, that subjects in the controlling-directives condition performed significantly worse than subjects in the noncontrolling-directives condition on a subsequent set of analytic reasoning problems, when tested by an experimenter who was unaware of a subject's condition. Interestingly, subjects in the controlling-directives condition regarded the teacher as qualitatively more competent than noncontrolling-directives subjects, in spite of their poorer performance. Furthermore, feelings about the task, mood differences, or perceptions of performance as a function of condition did not account for these findings. The data are discussed as they relate to the theoretical and practical import of the deleterious use of controlling techniques in a number of contexts, as well as adults' erroneous beliefs about controlling strategies.This study was funded in part from a grant from the Spencer Foundation and an NIMH grant to the first author.     

LESS SKILLED READERS HAVE LESS EFFICIENT SUPPRESSION MECHANISMS

Abstract— One approach to understanding the component processes and mechanisms underlying adult reading skill is to compare the performance of more skilled and less skilled readers on laboratory experiments. The results of some recent experiments employing this approach demonstrate that less skilled adult readers suppress less efficiently the inappropriate meanings of ambiguous words (e.g., the playing card vs. garden tool meanings of subject the incorrect forms of homophones (e.g., patients vs . patience), the typical-but-absent members of scenes (e.g., a tractor in a farm scene), and words superimposed on pictures. Less skilled readers are not less efficient in activating contextually appropriate information; in fact, they activate contextually appropriate information more strongly than more skilled readers do. Therefore, one conclusion that can be drawn from these experiments is that less skilled adult readers suffer from less efficient suppression mechanisms.     

An anger-control intervention with aggressive delinquent youths

Social problem-solving skills, a self-instructional procedure, and a “thinking-ahead” procedure were taught to institutionalized, aggressive, delinquent adolescents as part of an anger-control intervention package. A multiple baseline design across four subjects and an alternating-treatments design were used. The effects of intervention were assessed on problem-solving ability, use of self-guiding verbalizations for coping with anger provoking situations, reported frequency of anger-control behaviors relative to loss of anger-control incidents, and behavioral progress within the institution. All youths showed improvement during the training of problem solving on hypothetical dilemmas, with some generalization to untrained problems. Follow-up data on some youths suggested maintenance of treatment gains. Three of the youths displayed increased usage of self-instructions and thinking-ahead statements during personal anger-provoking situations. All youths displayed an increase in self-reported anger-control behaviors relative to loss of anger-control. Improvements in behavior outside of the therapy sessions were indicated by positive behavioral progress within the institution.     

The evolution of leadership during group development

This paper is based on the view that the theory of the group-as-a-whole is illuminated and clarified by a developmental perspective. Beck's theory of group development is used as the framework within which the evolution of four leadership roles across nine developmental phases are discussed. Leadership is defined as a shared function in which four participants play important roles in a dialectical process through which the structure of a group is developed, maintained, reinterpreted or modified as needed. Data are presented on verbal participation and on a sociometric questionnaire to illustrate changes in the four leaders' behavior and the members' perceptions of them across the phases of group development.