This study examined whether clients' ratings of the working alliance as well as their perception of cognitive-behavioral (CB) and psychodynamic-interpersonal (PI) techniques (delivered by therapists who used both) were associated with clients' intersession processes (i.e., their thoughts about therapy and therapeutic activity between sessions).…

Investigates the effects of personality types on the effectiveness of various treatment procedures in reducing test anxiety. Fails to support previous studies in which group application of counseling techniques reduced anxiety more than did a study skills group. (Author/PC)

Compared an affective (Gestalt two-chair intervention) and a cognitive-behavioral (problem-solving) counseling intervention used to help clients resolve intrapersonal conflicts related to a decision. A one-way analysis of variance revealed that affective intervention was more effective than cognitive behavioral intervention or no treatment for…

Whereas cognitive-behavioral (CB) therapy sessions aim to be instructive and encouraging, psychodynamic-interpersonal (PI) sessions aim to be exploratory and may be emotionally painful. Raters rated degree of pleasure and arousal in each sentence of client speech in CB and PI sessions (N=18) that therapists had identified as particularly helpful.…

Two variations of desensitization therapy for reducing test anxiety were studied, active desensitization in which the client describes his visualizations of the scenes and vicarious desensitization in which the client merely observes the desensitization treatment of another test anxious client. The relaxation treatment which emphasized application…

Compared a weight control treatment specifically tailored to the needs of residence hall students with a standardized behavioral procedure. Although posttreatment results indicated a very slight and nonsignificant advantage for the residence hall condition, this was not true at follow-up. Suggests the residence hall procedure may be overly…

Reviews investigation of therapist recommendations, an aspect of counseling that previously was vaguely understood. Results indicate a high frequency of recommendations, with most sessions containing multiple recommendations. Therapists provided eight types of recommendations; validation of internal experiences, reframing meaning, decision-making,…

The authors of this study examined the outcomes and processes of 2 types of group treatment--cognitive-behavioral treatment groups (CBTG) and humanistic group therapy (HGT)--offered to 200 elementary school children in a center for students with learning disabilities in Israel. Results indicated that the addition of either type of group treatment…

Failure- and misconduct-prone black and Hispanic high school students were given five weekly sessions of rational-emotive education. Comparisons were made with alternate treatment and on-treatment controls. The rational-emotive groups showed greatest improvement on all dependent variables over an extended period of time. (Author/MFD)