Manualized Treatment of Panic Disorder in a Medical Setting: Two Illustrative Case Studies

People who experience panic attacks (PAs) typically present to medical settings, concerned that their symptoms signify a life-threatening condition. Despite the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for panic disorder (PD), medical practitioners seldom provide this type of treatment. Physicians may lack the time or expertise to impart such behavioral medicine interventions, while patients may find group or individual CBT too costly even when available. Researchers have begun investigating manualized CBT as a cost-effective alternative when traditional forms of this intervention are prohibited. This article describes two case studies in which women presenting to a medical clinic with PD were treated with 6 weeks of manualized CBT after pharmacotherapy was unsuccessful or unpalatable. Both patients exhibited reductions in panic and depressive symptomatology over baseline levels, along with increases in self-efficacy regarding their ability to manage future PAs. Improvements were maintained over 12 months, supporting continued use of manualized CBT as a supplement or alternative to pharmacological methods of treating PD in the medical setting.     

Recognition failure of words with a single meaning

Recognition failure of recallable words was demonstrated with single-meaning target words after a 7-day retention interval. When overall levels of recognition were equated, the magnitude of the effect was the same as that observed with high-frequency words of multiple meanings in other experiments. It was concluded that, contrary to suggestions of Reder, Anderson, and Bjork (1974), encoding specificity is not limited to words that have several semantic senses. The experiment also provided evidence contrary to the hypothesis that recall of unrecognized items comes about because of additional learning opportunities afforded by the recognition test.     

SEX ROLE PERCEPTIONS OF FILIPINO ADOLESCENTS*

Sex role perceptions of 118 male and 118 female Filipino adolescents with respect to self-esteem and locus of control were investigated under two sets of instructions: (a) a standard set and (b) a set in which subjects were asked to respond as they thought a pupil at the same school and in the same academic year but of the opposite sex would respond. Evidence of the positive self-perceptions of Filipino adolescent males relative to females came from responses to both sets of instructions. On the locus of control scale, females perceived themselves to be more internal than males under standard instructions. Both sexes tended to attribute less internal control to the opposite sex than to themselves but again this tendency was much stronger for the males. The results are discussed in the context of previous U.S. and Filipino research.     

Career assessment supervision: Could what we don't know hurt us?

In this brief comment, one marked discrepancy in the career assessment field is identified: many students receive career assessment supervision, and many counselling and counselling psychology programs seemingly place much value on such supemision, but theoretical, empirical, and practical attention has yet to be advanced toward explicating the career assessment supervision process itself Concern over this lack of attention as expressed, and the need to make a more direct, concerted attack on explicating the career assessment supervision process is called for.     

Validation of self-ideal body size discrepancy as a measure of body dissatisfaction

Recently, body dissatisfaction has been conceptualized as the discrepancy between self and ideal body size estimates. This study evaluated the validity of this conceptualization using three methods for estimating actual and ideal body size: (a) the Body Image Assessment, (b) the Body Image Testing System, and (c) the Body Image Detection Device. The three body image assessment procedures were concurrently administered to a sample of 110 women diagnosed: bulimia nervosa (n=18),obese (n=34),and non-eating disorder (n=58).The Eating Disorder Inventory Body Dissatisfaction scale was also used to measure body dissatisfaction. Measures of self-ideal body size discrepancy were found to correlate more highly with measures of body dissatisfaction than were measures of current body size perception, ideal body size, body size estimation accuracy, or indices based on actual body size. Estimation of both current and ideal body size were found to significantly predict overall body dissatisfaction; thus, both self and ideal body size measures were found to be significant components in determining body size dissatisfaction. These data were interpreted as supportive of the conceptualization of body dissatisfaction as the discrepancy between self and ideal body size estimates.     

An auditory cue-depreciation effect.

An experiment is reported in which subjects first heard a list of words and then tried to identify these same words from degraded utterances. Paralleling previous findings in the visual modality, the probability of identifying a given utterance was reduced when the utterance was immediately preceded by other, more degraded, utterances of the same word. A second experiment replicated this "cue-depreciation effect" and in addition found the effect to be weakened, if not eliminated, when the target word was not included in the initial list or when the test was delayed by two days.     

The effect of response choice relatedness on pantomime and verbal recognition ability in aphasic patients

Twenty aphasic and twenty control subjects were examined on two versions of a pantomime recognition and a verbal recognition test; one version containing response choices conceptually/semantically related to target responses, the other containing unrelated response choices. The aphasic group was inferior to controls on the pantomime and verbal recognition tests, although the magnitude and consistency of the differences between aphasics and controls were greater for the pantomime test. The presence of conceptually/semantically related response choices on the pantomime recognition test significantly reduced test scores of aphasic patients, and this reduction was related to the magnitude of the effect of response choice relatedness on their verbal recognition test performance. The findings are consistent with an interpretation of aphasia as an impairment of a central symbolic ability which can affect processing for meaning in both verbal and nonverbal modes of communication.