The present study was designed to determine the effect of skin-temperature-biofeedback training on cellular proliferation in three psoriasis patients. It was hypothesized that (a) psoriasis patients would be able to consciously decrease skin temperature of psoriatic tissue, and (b) there would be a positive correlation between rate of cellular proliferation and temperature change. Results obtained indicated biofeedback training to be effective in decreasing the surface temperature of psoriatic tissue. A 2 X 7 analysis of variance for two repeated measures indicated the change in skin temperatures as a function of sample period to be significant, F (6,26) = 3.29, p < .02. Generalization of temperature-training effects from the biofeedback to the no-feedback condition were observed. Rate of proliferation decreased from pretraining to posttraining biopsies.

Traditional treatment for insomnia has been chemotherapy-- despite short-term value and side effects. Need for an alternative has led to research on behavioral treatment methods for insomnia. Relaxation training has consistently produced effective results, but the limited research on biofeedback and stimulus control suggests that they too may be viable alternate treatment methods. The present research investigated electromyogram (EMG) biofeedback, pseudo-EMG biofeedback, relaxation, training, and stimulus control as methods of treating sleep-onset insomnia. Volunteers consisting of 12 males and 24 females were recruited through newspaper advertisements. Subjects had no known physical cause for insomnia and were either free of sleeping medication or kept their dosage constant during the study. Subjects were matched for age and sex, randomly assigned to one of the four treatment groups, then randomly assigned to one of three therapists. Results indicated that pretreatment EMG scores for the four groups were high but not significantly different-- while post treatment EMG scores were not significantly reduced. Pretreatment sleep-latency measures were high, but not significantly different from each other. Post treatment latency measures were significantly reduced, but not significantly different from each other. Correlation between EMG-change scores and sleep-latency-change measures was non-significant. Pretreatment nightly awakenings for the four groups …

To test predictions of learned helplessness theory and attribution theory, depressed and nondepressed subjects were exposed to a word-association task in a skill, chance, or no-instructional-set condition. Subjects were asked to make attributions of success and failure to four factors--ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck--and rate expectancy of success. The predictions of both theories were only partially confirmed. Difficulties relating to the experimental design may account for the failure of nondepressed/skill subjects to show greater expectancy change. As predicted, all subjects in the chance condition displayed similar expectancy changes. Also as predicted, nondepressed subjects did not rate effort as being the least influential factor. Depressed subjects, however, rated all factors equivalently, instead of rating effort least influential.

The present research was undertaken to investigate the effects of two independent variables considered potentially important to the reduction of fear through systematic desensitization. The first independent variable investigated was the importance of making covert motor responses when instructions were given to imagine motor behavior. Electromyographic measures were obtained on subjects' covert muscular activity as they imagined themselves raising their arms. The subjects were then classified, on the basis of their average electromyographic responsiveness, as high-responders (those showing relatively high levels when imaging movement) and low-responders. A 2 X 2 analysis of covariance showed a significant difference in the posttreatment scores of the high- and low responders on performance measures, the high-responders performing better. The difference between the two instruction groups was not statistically significant. Additional analyses indicate the importance of the instruction variable is mitigated by the extent to which subjects actually follow the particular instructions given. These data imply electromyography may be used in clinical practice as an assessment tool to determine which subjects are likely to respond to systematic desensitization. They also suggest the possibility of using response measures to train self-monitoring of imagery. Concerning the imagery construct, the present study offers an empirical alternative to the …