The “interbehavioral” approach to treatment

This article introduces and describes the “interbehavioral” approach to clinical intervention as an interdisciplinary system where assessment and treatment encompass physical and psychological effects as continuous interactions. Behavior disorders and their elimination follow a general learning theory model as interpreted by J.R. Kantor. This theory view responses and stimuli as having their own functions that directly affect progress in therapy. Kantor's interbehavioral or “systems” methods obviate the narrow focus of operant (behavioral) psychology by broadening the analysis to include individual history and a better integration of human service disciplines. To this extent, clinical and training applications attend to more of the human operations and overcome such limitations as poor internal validity and problems with generalization of treated behavior to everyday settings. Implications of the interbehavioral system for clinical networks are discussed.     

Private events revisited: Does unobservable mean private?

This paper presents a discussion on the misapplication of the concept private events in traditional psychotherapy interpretation. Shown is that, logically, the term privacy is contradictory to principles of science and it further inhibits anaturalistic approach to observation. Evidence of so-called private clinical events are presented within an alternative model that obviates the role of privacy and encourages primarily an objective outlook on the events.     

Memory deficits before and after temporal lobectomy: Effect of laterality and age of onset

Laterality and age of onset effects on semantic and figural memory were evaluated in 30 right-handed, left speech dominant (amobarbital test) patients with epilepsy before and after temporal lobectomy. There were no effects of focus on WAIS-R IQ scores. Early onset (less than or equal to 5 years) was associated with lower IQ and memory (WMS). Left Temporal (LT) patients showed worse semantic than figural memory preoperatively. Unexpectedly, early onset LT had marked postoperative decline of figural memory, whereas late onset LT patients showed the previously reported worsening of semantic memory. Right Temporal (RT) lobectomy patients, in contrast, improved in both semantic and figural memory regardless of age of onset. A "crowding effect" was suggested by the decline in figural memory following surgery in the early onset LT patients who remained stable or improved in semantic memory. Results indicate the need to incorporate age of onset of seizures into laterality models of memory function following unilateral temporal-hippocampal resection.