The purpose of the present study was to determine specific psychotic factors associated with environmental sensitivities, the changes in those tendencies occurring with ecological treatment and the extent to which those behaviors could be attributed to the chronicity of the illness. An inpatient group of 42 environmental patients was compared to an inpatient population of 20 chronic spinal pain patients. Instruments utilized in the study included the Bender Gestalt Test of Motor Ability, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) with the Harris and Lingoe subscales, and three subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised, Digit Symbol, Object Assembly, and Block Design. Data was analyzed via multivariate analysis of covariance, analysis of covariance, canonical analysis, and t tests for related and independent means.

Training programs designed to remediate eating deficits of higher level patients have involved some combination of verbal instructions, manual guidance, modeling, and reinforcement. Training methods which incorporate relaxation and imagery to facilitate behavior change have received little attention with this population. The current study was designed to explore the use of relaxation and suggestions as a training strategy to modify the shoveling behavior of moderately and mildly retarded institutionalized clients. Three treatment methods, relaxation-suggestion with reinforcement, modeling-instruction with reinforcement, and relaxation-suggestion alone, were compared. A greater reduction in shoveling behavior was hypothesized for the modeling-instruction with reinforcement group than for either of the relaxation-suggestion groups, and a greater reduction in shoveling behavior was hypothesized for the relaxation suggestion with reinforcement group than for the relaxation-suggestion alone group.

According to Deikman (1966), meditation (defined as a training to sustain attention) has a deautomatizing effect. This ascertion was utilized in the present study as a departure point and explored within an information processing framework for classical conditioning. A sample of 48 college students was selected and randomly assigned to four conditions with different instructional sets involving allocation of attention during a classical conditioning background situation. The basic hypothesis of the study was that provided arousal factors were controlled, focusing of attention upon internal stimulation (i.e. breathing) could delay or attenuate the affect of conditioning, habituation and extinction as compared with instructions to externally allocate attention (on the CS and US). A secondary hypothesis predicted that for subjects under switching conditions changing from internal to external allocation and vice versa would produce a more pronounced extinction pattern as compared with subjects under non—switching conditions.

The major purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a stress-inoculation treatment and an equally credible attention-placebo control in alleviating self-reported test anxiety and in facilitating intellectual performance in nontraditional (aged 50 and over) college students. Many studies have demonstrated the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral approaches in the treatment of test anxiety among young college students. The literature suggests that persons returning to school after a long absence who have subsequently enrolled as college students experience greater test anxiety and decrements in test performance in evaluative situations than their younger counterparts.

This study was designed to explore possible demographic and personality correlates of pregnancy-resolution alternatives. A total of 146 female college students were given the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, the Intrinsic Extrinsic Religious Orientation Scale, a demographic questionnaire, and a Pregnancy-Resolution Questionnaire. The data were analyzed by means of the chi-square statistic and discriminant analysis.

Measures of pain tolerance and threshold were obtained for 100 male and female subjects in a pretest treatment posttest experiment using the cold pressor test. Subjects were divided into five treatment groups with an equal representation of males and females in each group. In addition each group was divided into high and low locus of control, resulting in a 2 X 5, locus of control-by—treatment, experimental design. Treatment groups received one of the following five sets of instructions: prescribed pleasant imagery, prescribed angry imagery, self-generated pleasant imagery, self-generated angry imagery, and expectancy control. Credibility checks were obtained on all groups, and an ANOVA revealed no significant differences in credibility ratings among the groups.

The present study investigated the relative efficacy of paradoxical, behavioral, and reflection-support treatments among college students who complained about procrastination of studying. Although there is much literature describing successful use of paradoxical treatment, there has been little substantive research. Paradoxical techniques offer more complex theoretical explanations than behavioral therapy even though in practice the procedure of each are often quite similar. Subjects were selected by their response to an ad in the school newspaper that offered free treatment for students who had problems with procrastination. Further screening of participants was done through clinical interviews. Thirty-three subjects were selected for treatment of procrastination with three clients randomly assigned to each of 11 advanced psychology graduate students who served as therapists. Each therapist provided all three types of treatment, one type of treatment to each of their three assigned clients.

To aid in understanding headache etiology and symptomatology, psychological and physiological variables were examined in patients with migraine and combination headaches (combined migraine and muscle-contraction headaches). One hundred patients being evaluated for treatment of their headaches at The New England Center for Headache participated in this study. They were assigned to the migraine or combination group, based on diagnoses made by three headache specialists—a psychologist, a psychiatrist, and a nuerologist. Personality data from the MMPI and frontalis electromyographic readings reflecting muscle tensions across three stimulus conditions were compared between the two groups. Subjects were also asked to rate the perceived level of stress elicited by the three conditions.

This study attempted to extend the concept of achievement motivation, as proposed by Weiner's attributional model, to social affiliative contexts. It was proposed that low social anxiety individuals behave like high achievement motivation individuals who make more self-attributions for success, but more external attributions for failure, whereas high social anxiety individuals take more personal responsibility for failure social outcomes, but make more external attributions when successful. Subjects were 243 undergraduate students, 143 females and 100 males. They completed the Leary Social Anxiety Scale, the Lefcourt Affiliation Locus of Control Scale, the Fenigstein Social Anxiety Scale, the Social Attribution Scale, and the Russell Causal Dimension Scale.

The goal of this experiment was to determine whether group rational emotive therapy would prove superior to usual group therapy in improving the psychological functioning of male alcoholics in an inpatient treatment facility and to determine if memory dysfunction would impede therapeutic progress. Four areas of psychological functioning were discussed for their relevance to etiology, recidivism, and treatment evaluation; they were depression, self-conception, social anxiety, and cognitive functioning. Further, rational emotive therapy as a potentially superior treatment for alcoholism was discussed and outcome research was reviewed.

Drug-induced tardive dyskinesia, an irreversible involuntary movement disorder caused by neuroleptic drugs, may reflect cholinergic hypofunction in the corpus striatum. Therapeutic results have been reported in trials of choline and lecithin, nutritional substrates which may enhance cholinergic neurotransmission. Lecithin's effects on dyskinetic symptoms were examined in 50 male patients in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Patients were randomly assigned to treatment or control groups; 31 patients were retained in the analytic cohort. Experimental patients were treated with 60 gm/day lecithin (55% phosphatidyl choline) for 11 days. Symptom frequency was rated from videotapes made at baseline, 3 and 11 days of treatment, and 1 week follow-up.

Assessment research of forensic populations has largely dealt with finding differences within criminal types. Fourteen of the studies reviewed found no significant differences between types of criminals on test performance. Two of these fourteen found no differences between criminals and noncriminals . The Criminal Thinking Model developed by Yochelson and Samenow proposed a continuum of criminality with every person falling somewhere between the two poles of responsibility and irresponsibility. Perhaps one reason previous research failed to discriminate differences was because they had failed to first establish if criminals differed from noncriminals.

Hypnotic susceptibility, often regarded as a relatively stable individual characteristic, has been found to be related to the personality dimension of absorption. To test the hypothesis that this relationship is a function of the nature of the sensory response to stimulus events and the development of cognitive models pursuant to the processing of that information, a group of hospitalized, chronic pain patients were assessed on the following dimensions: absorption, clinical hypnotic responsiveness, cognitive resistance to interference, and visual automatization.

A literature review revealed 15 variables as commonly studied as associated with adolescent pregnancy. The research showed conflicting results in many of these areas. Twenty-one pregnant and 20 non-pregnant adolescents were tested using the Arlin Test of Formal Reasoning (ATFR) and the Reiss's Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale. Pregnant participants were expected to score lower than non-pregnant participants on the ATFR; and, the low permissives (based on responses to the Reiss's Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale) were expected to score higher than high permissives on the ATFR. However, the results did not support the hypotheses. Several areas were examined for exploratory purposes. There was a significant difference between high permissives and low permissives for parent/peer orientation for sexual behavior attitudes. Additional exploratory demographic information was collected using a General Information Questionnaire.

A group of 44 high-orgasm-consistency and 34 low-orgasmconsistency women were administered the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, a Sexual Behavior Questionnaire, and the Fall Back Task. Excitatory and inhibitory controlling attitudes as manifested in hypnotic susceptibility, reported control of thinking and movement during coitus, causal attributions, and attitude toward alcoholic beverages were related to orgasm consistency. Women experiencing expectancy disconfirmation for coital outcomes attributed outcomes to unstable factors, supporting the application of Weiner's achievement model to the domain of coital orgasm. High and low consistency women showed different patterns of causal attribution for coital outcomes. High consistency women's attributions fit their reported sexual experiences, while low consistency women's attributions suggested the presence of self-esteem enhancing cognitive distortions.