Counselling and psychotherapy as a form of learning: some implications for practice

This paper explores counselling and psychotherapy as a form of learning. Previous experiences may create distortions in meaning-making perspectives, distortions that create templates for evaluating future experience. These templates act as barriers to being open to experience; thus there is an inability to learn from experience. The process of therapy can provide a learning milieu for the exploration and working through of these barriers, with a potential outcome of a return to learning from experience. It is suggested here that intrinsic to the learning milieu created in therapy there are elements of significant, transformative and emotional learning. Therapy is thus a reparative discourse that facilitates a return to learning from experience. A deconstruction of this concept is provided here as a way of developing the exploration of counselling and psychotherapy as a form of learning.     

Toward a technology of generalization: The identification of natural contingencies of reinforcement

Applied behavior analysts have directed a growing effort towards the development of a technology for behavioral generalization and maintenance over the past decade. Among the list of potential generalization promoters thought to exist is the natural contingency of social reinforcement (i.e., a behavioral trap) for new behavior in its untrained form or setting, or over time. Although past researchers have noted a need to program for the generalization and maintenance of behavior change, the current understanding of behavioral traps precludes the use of these contingencies to support behavioral changes when interventions are not in operation. This article describes five forms of evidence useful for the identification and analysis of natural contingencies of reinforcement. Examples from the applied research literature are provided to illustrate the kinds of studies that would greatly enhance our knowledge of behavioral traps and improve our ability to understand and program the generalization of trained behaviors across diverse forms and settings, and over time.     

Sustained-attention capacity in young and older adults

The sustained-attention capacity of young (21-29 years) and older (65-78 years) adults was examined using a high-event rate digit-discrimination vigilance task presented at three levels of stimulus degradation. Increased stimulus degradation led to a reduction in the hit rate and to a greater decline in hit rate over blocks (increased vigilance decrement). Sensitivity (d') declined over blocks only at the highest level of stimulus degradation. Older adults had a lower hit rate and showed greater vigilance decrement than young adults, particularly when stimuli were highly degraded. However, both age groups showed the same pattern of stability in sensitivity when stimulus degradation was moderate, and sensitivity decrement over time when stimulus degradation was high. The results suggest that the process of sustained allocation of capacity--as reflected in temporal changes in sensitivity--operates similarly in young and older adults.     

Out of the laboratory and into the community. 26 years of applied behavior analysis at the Juniper Gardens Children's Project.

Application of Skinner's principles to socially significant human behavior had been well articulated by 1968 (Baer, Wolf, & Risley, 1968). Applications of these principles by Baer, Wolf, Risley, Hall, Hart, Christophersen, and their colleagues were in evidence as early as 1964 in the homes, schools, and clinics of inner-city Kansas City, Kansas, at the Juniper Gardens Housing Project. The work continues relatively uninterrupted, having contributed extensively to the literature of applied behavior analysis and the lives of community residents. This article describes the project and illustrates how applied behavioral research was initiated and extended, how the work addressed general concerns in psychology, and how it continues to address contemporary concerns within the community.     

THE CLASSWIDE PEER TUTORING PROGRAM: IMPLEMENTATION FACTORS MODERATING STUDENTS' ACHIEVEMENT

We conducted a study designed to assess implementation of the classwide peer tutoring program and the relationship between implementation variation and student outcome. A clinical replication design was used. Five volunteer elementary teachers were trained to implement the program; their implementation was monitored for 19 consecutive weeks during 1 school year. Overall, the results indicated that specific variations in program implementation were associated with students' responses to treatment. It was also demonstrated that different teachers' applications of the program produced differential levels of student outcome. Implementation factors related to lower spelling achievement were (a) reduced opportunities to receive program sessions, (b) reduced probabilities of students' participation in program opportunities, (c) too many students assigned unchallenging spelling words, and (d) reduced rates of daily point earning reflecting lower levels of spelling practice during tutoring sessions. The implications of these findings and methods of preventing these implementation problems are discussed in the context of quality assurance and social validity.     

Evaluating treatment effects in single-subject behavioral experiments using quality-control charts

Quality-control charts can be particularly useful in identifying treatment effects and patterns of behaviors in single-subject behavior-analytic experiments that cannot be determined by visual inspection of their graphs. Using an example from the behavior analysis literature the quality-control charts identified the presence of treatment effects across phases as well as the presence of trends within and between phases. The ease of their calculations suggest use of them by behavior analysts whenever the effects of particular interventions are questionable.     

McEwen-Induced Modulation of Endocrine History: A Partial Review

In endless facets of physiology, there are points of homeostatic balance, such that too much or too litttle of something can both be deleterious (i.e., an "inverse U" pattern). This is particularly true when considering glucocorticoids (GCs), the adrenals steroid secreted during stress. In the first part of this paper, I review a number of realms in which a paucity and an excess of GCs are both damaging. Some findings are classical (for example, concerning GC effects upon body weight), while some are quite recent and have considerable implications for both physiology and pathophysiology (for example, inverse U's of GC actions in the realm of immunity and neuronal survival). The second part of the review considers the far thornier issue of how such inverse U's of GC actions are generated on a cellular and molecular level. One solution that has evolved, primarily in the hippocampus within the nervous system, involves the presence of two different types of receptors for GCs within the same cells; so long as the two receptors have very different affinities and mediate opposing effects on some cellular endpoint, an inverse U will emerge. The second solution, found in a number of peripheral tissues, involves GCs having opposing effects on the amount of some signal being generated (e.g., an immune cytokine) and the sensitivity of target tissues to that signal; under conditions that appear to be physiologically relevant, inverse U's emerge from this pattern as well. The final section of this review considers the enormous role played by Bruce McEwen in the emergence of this literature. I suggest that while much of this obviously has to do with the facts that have come from his group, another substantial contribution is from his steadying and supportive personality, the veritable embodiment of homeostatic balance.     

A day unit for families

The Family Day Unit at the Maryborough Hospital, London, carries out an intensive treatment programme for highly dysfunctional families. Up to ten families attend the Unit five days per week from nine a.m. to three p.m. They stay for a period of at least three months and not longer than fifteen months. Normally some twenty to thirty patients, adults and children, attend every day. This paper gives the reasons for setting up this Family Day Unit. The aims and structure of the Unit are described, the treatment method outlined and some preliminary results are discussed.