Self-monitoring, lowered arousal training (i.e., biofeedback and relaxation training) and maintenance follow-up appeared to contribute to effective treatment of hypertension. Cognitive therapy, while effective in treatment of some stress-related disorders, has not been studied as a specific treatment component for hypertension. The present study explored the use of cognitive therapy as a treatment variable to reduce blood pressure in hypertensive persons. The effectiveness of a multi-element treatment including cognitive therapy, blood-pressure biofeedback, and relaxation training was also assessed. Self-monitoring and maintenance training were included as a part of each treatment process.

The relationships of cognitive complexity, social perspective taking, and moral reasoning have been primarily examined in children or juveniles. Little work has been done to study their relationships in the late adolescent and young adult college student population. Additionally, the research to date has only examined relationships among pairs of these constructs. There has been no attempt to assess the combined relationship of cognitive complexity and role-taking skills to moral reasoning at any developmental level. Therefore, there are two purposes in this study. First, to test the theory of ego function regression in depression on cognitive developmental concepts related to interpersonal functioning. Second, the study will determine the individual as well as combined relationships of cognitive complexity and social perspective taking to moral judgment in a late adolescent to young adult college student population.

It was hypothesized that effect size in therapy outcome research would correlate positively with congruence effects. Congruence was defined as the degree to which what had been practiced in treatment was scored as improvement when outcome was measured. Additionally, it was hypothesized that correcting effect sizes for estimated nongeneralizable change attributable to congruence (i.e., representativeness reduction) would significantly reduce the average magnitude of effect.

Contingency management has been utilized to improve treatment compliance and attendance in a medical setting. A related question involves the effect of contingency management on attendance in outpatient psychotherapy. Sixty-nine individuals ranging in age from 8 to 50 years agreed to participate in such a study. These individuals agreed to sign a contract specifying consequation for failure to notify the centers 24 hours in advance of an impending absence. Data on attendance and notification of impending absences were collected weekly for five sessions. After five sessions, dropouts and remainers were interviewed and the course of treatment was discussed. For the purpose of this study, a "dropout" occurred whenever an individual terminated therapy by missing an appointment and not rescheduling, or whenever an individual missed three consecutive appointments.

This study compared biofeedback assisted cue-controlled skin temperature training with skin temperature biofeedback training in subjects attempting to raise the digital skin temperature of their dominant hand. In addition to classification according to training, the subjects were also divided into two diagnostic groups. One group was composed of subjects with cold hands and Raynaud's disease while the other group consisted of nonRaynaud's disease cold handed subjects. The treatment and diagnostic groups were compared along the dimensions of amount of posttreatment digital skin temperature change and degree of generalization of digital skin temperature control to a cold room challenge task.

A literature review indicated that psychopathological symptomology must be considered within the social context of the patient. Recent research has suggested that the psychopathological symptoms of the psychotic patient function on a covert level of communication as a strategy to control the threat of interpersonal intimacy. The present investigation similarly examined the interpersonal function of another class of patient symptomology, somatic symptoms. It was hypothesized that somatic symptom verbalizations of psychiatric outpatients also can serve as covert messages to avoid the risk of interpersonal intimacy. Results indicated that only the high-somatic-symptom patients significantly increased their symptom verbalizations in response to demand. When the interviewer modeled impersonal self-disclosures, both groups showed a low rate of somatic verbalizations. The groups did not differ. When the interviewer modeled personal self-disclosures, both patient groups significantly increased their psychological symptom verbalizations compared to their counterparts in the impersonal condition. In addition, low somatic symptom patients under the demand for personal disclosure showed significantly less avoidance behavior than any other group. No differences were found among the experimental groups in terms of self-disclosure level. The results clearly lend support to Haley's (1963) intimacy-avoidance corollary; that is, symptoms of non-psychotic patients function as covert messages that avoid …

This study was designed to investigate the inhibiting effect that caffeine may have in inducing deeper states of relaxation. The degree of relaxation was assessed by physiological measures, self-ratings, and behavioral observations of relaxation behavior.

George Kelly has stated that persons place interpretations, or constructs, on what they perceive. Past research has indicated that subjects more meaningfully apply their own personal constructs to persons and situations than constructs supplied from other sources. This study attempted to confirm previous findings. Sixty-three university students used their own personal constructs, elicited from the Role Construct Repertory Test, and supplied instrumental-expressive role constructs to interpret and rate 12 actors portraying instrumental and expressive behaviors in six videotaped scenes. The purpose of this study is to compare the meaningfulness to subjects of stereotypic terms in a sex-role inventory to the meaningfulness of the subjects' own personal constructs when interpreting typical masculine- and feminine-typed behavior.

During the past 80 years, similar descriptions of a hyperactive behavior pattern in children have appeared in medical, educational, and psychological literature. Hyperactivity has been conceptualized as a character disorder, an organic disorder, and, most recently, as a behavior disorder. In this study, hyperactivity was explained in interactional terms, using Rotter's social learning theory of personality. Little consideration has been given in research to the influence of an abnormally high activity level upon personality development during childhood. The purpose of this study was to investigate the general influence of negative interactions associated with hyperactivity upon the organization of four personality constructs: locus of control, self-esteem, trait anxiety, and state anxiety.

The primary purpose of the present study is to demonstrate that acne vulgaris can be reduced by psychological treatment. A cognitive-behavioral adjunctive intervention involving biofeedback-assisted relaxation and cognitive imagery procedures for the treatment of acne vulgaris was investigated in this study with 30 patients, already receiving traditional dermatological treatment, as participants. A three-group design was used which consisted of a treatment (relaxation-imagery), a rational behavior group therapy attention-comparison, and a medical intervention control (medication and lesion extraction) group.