Cognitive processing therapy for chronic PTSD from childhood sexual abuse: A case study

This paper describes a case of chronic Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, 4th edn; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The client has a long history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), as well as repeated sexual victimization as an adult and addiction issues. She presented with significant avoidance symptoms, including a highly restricted range of affect and distinct feelings of detachment from others. These symptoms had been greatly reduced by the end of the 17-week therapy including both individual and group modalities. The paper elaborates on theoretical issues, the Cognitive Processing Therapy model (Resick & Schnicke, 1993) as it was adapted for use with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, the various phases of the therapeutic process, and specific examples of therapeutic change with this particularly complicated case.     

Boundary regulation in family and personal systems: Perceptions of late adolescents

Examination of boundary regulation can provide family therapists with a framework to describe both the functioning of family systems and personal systems (i.e., the intrapsychic functioning of individual family members). In the present study, late adolescents' perceptions of boundary regulation within their family systems (i.e., ratings of family health, communication, leadership, expressiveness, cohesion, and family conflict) were related to regulation of their personal boundaries (i.e., self-reported personal competence, distress, and patterns of defense mechanism use). In addition, personal system variables reliably discriminated between adolescents who described their families as psychologically healthy versus psychologically unhealthy.     

Validation of the Children's Assertive Behavior Scale

Relationships between sociometric indices and scores of 160 elementary-school children on the Children's Assertive Behavior Scale (CABS) were examined to determine whether this instrument differentiates children of varying levels of social competence. Children who obtained either high or low scores on peer nominations of friendship and admiration were identified and compared on CABS passive, aggressive, and assertive scores. Children who scored high on positive peer nominations responded in a significantly less aggressive manner than children who received low scores on such nominations. These effects were observed for the CABS format that consisted of stimulus situations involving adults but not for the form involving peers. With regard to responses toward peers, a significant interaction between sex and sociometric status emerged. These findings suggest the importance of incorporating subject variables such as race and sex as well as assessments of behavior toward both adults and children in isolating and training components of social skill.The authors wish to express their appreciation to Jean Birbilis, Gail Hammersly, Marieta Knopf, and Donna Wadley for their assistance in data collection and analysis.     

The measurement of imagery ability

When variations in imagery ability are used to predict task performance, distinct and consistent relationships do not tend to emerge. A selective review of studies is undertaken to outline some basic reasons why individual difference measures of imagery are often so unsuccessful. Relevant studies concerning the learning and performance of motor skills are examined in some detail. It is concluded that the major problem in these studies is the types of imagery tests that have been employed; these tests have not adequately measured imagery ability. A recently developed instrument, the Movement Imagery Questionnaire, which has been designed to assess individual differences in visual and kinesthetic imagery of movement is discussed.     

Depth of processing: When the principle of congruity fails

Two factors, level of processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) and congruity (Schulman, 1974), known to have large effects on the recall of experimenter-provided responses to questions, were examined in a series of five incidental learning experiments using subject-generated responses. The data show that manipulation of level of processing has the same effect on recall of subjectgenerated responses as it does on experimenter-provided responses. However, the effect of congruity is reversed for subject-generated responses. The data suggest that the difficulty of generating unrelated responses (“incongruous“ items) may account, at least in part, for the failure of the “principle of congruity“ with subject-generated responses.     

The effect of couples training and partner co-operativeness in the behavioral treatment of obesity

To evaluate the influence of spouse co-operativeness and couples training in the treatment of obesity, 29 obese men and women were assigned to three experimental conditions: (1) Co-operative spouse-couples training: subjects attended all meetings with spouses. Spouses were trained in modeling, monitoring, and reinforcement techniques; (2) Co-operative spouse-subject alone: subjects attended meetings alone even though their partners had agreed to become involved in treatment; (3) Non-cooperative spouse: subjects had spouses refusing to participate in the program, and attended sessions alone. At the 3-month and 6-month maintenance assessments. subjects in the spouse training condition lost significantly more weight than subjects in the other two conditions. Weight losses compared favorably to those of any controlled study with subjects in the couples training group averaging nearly 30 lbs lost after 8$\text{1}\text{2}$ months of treatment. In the absence of spouse training, subjects with co-operative spouses did no better than subjects with non-co-operative spouses. The findings suggest that spouse training may have a potent facilitative effect in weight reduction, and that this effect may promote long-term maintenance of weight loss.     

Nasality and precision of articulation

Two reading passages, one with nasal consonants and one without, were tape-recorded for 72 subjects: 34 selected as having precise articulation and 38 selected as having imprecise articulation. These speech samples were evaluated for degree of precision and also for degree of nasality by the psychological scaling method of equal-appearing intervals employing a 7-point scale. Analysis indicated a relationship between degree of precision and degree of unpleasant nasality, that is, a tendency for decreases in precision to be accompanied by increased nasality and a tendency for males to be more imprecise in articulation and more nasal than females.     

Feedback modalities as a consideration in biofeedback applications

Effects associated with specific feedback modalities are neither clear nor well explored. The present paper provides an overview of feedback modalities typically used for the presentation of information from major physiological systems. Some consideration of feedback modality in relation to theory is provided with a discussion of trends in past applications.     

Extradimensional shift learning in pigeons: Positive and negative transfer produced by prior discrimination training

Four groups of pigeons were trained on a free operant successive discrimination between line-stimuli differing in orientation. The groups differed according to their previous treatment. Two groups had received true discrimination (TD) training with stimuli differing in colour and two groups had received pseudo-discrimination (PD) training. For one pair of groups the line-stimulus that was to become the positive stimulus in the transfer stage of the experiment was superimposed on both colours and in these the subjects given PD training learned the orientation discrimination more readily than those given TD training. In the other pair of groups TD animals learned more readily than PD. These results require us to modify current theories of attentional factors in transfer.