Encouragement is a very effective means of enhancing appropriate behavior in others. Before one can be encouraging, one must recognize how people discourage others through verbalizations, actions, attitudes, beliefs, one's position in the family, and school. Schools discourage students through expectations, grades, report cards, competition,…

Attempted to identify predictors of positive treatment outcome following behavioral marital therapy. The only variable that significantly predicted outcome at both posttest and follow-up was a measure reflecting traditional affiliation/independence patterns: couples with a highly affiliative wife and a highly independent husband were less likely…

Assigned 139 subjects to intensive behavioral or to low-contact smoking treatment and to 2-milligram nicotine gum or to placebo gum in a 2x2 factorial design. Nicotine gum produced higher abstinence rates than did placebo. Subjects receiving low-contact condition plus nicotine gum had excellent abstinence rates at both 26 weeks and 52 weeks.…

Reacts to four cognitive-behavioral therapeutic approaches of systematic desensitization, rational restructuring, anxiety management training, and stress inoculation training, and to previous articles discussing the approaches. Concludes that approaches seem uniquely well-suited to use as part of deliberate psychological education efforts. (NB)

Responds to previous articles discussing counseling techniques of systematic desensitization, anxiety management training, stress inoculation training, and rational restructuring. Raises additional considerations with respect to assessment, technique selection, and technique implementation. (NB)

Assigned chronic low back pain patients to operant behavioral (OB) treatment, cognitive-behavioral (CB) treatment, or waiting-list (WL) condition. Both treatments resulted in decreased physical and psychosocial disability. OB patients' greater improvement leveled off at followup; CB patients continued to improve over the 12 months following…

The article describes the procedures and variables involved in planning, implementing, and evaluating timeout with exceptional students. Among steps considered are defining the target behavior operationally, analyzing situations, and determining type of timeout and supervision. (CL)

Assigned 43 chronic pain patients to couples group treatment, patient-only group treatment, or waiting-list control. The 16-hour cognitive-behavioral program produced reduction in pain, spouse-observed pain behavior, physical and psychosocial dysfunction, marital satisfaction, and use of health care resources. Spouse involvement did not facilitate…

Compared the effectiveness of behavior modification, cognitive modification, and cognitive-behavior modification in increasing compliance with an exercise prescription for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients (N=96). Although all treatment groups showed improvement, the cognitive-behavior modification strategy produced the most…

Investigated two different combinations of behavior therapy and pharmacotherapy in treating overweight women (N=91). Results showed that anorectic medication introduced halfway into the program was more effective than medication introduced initially; however, both methods of pharmacotherapy were dependent on continuation of behavioral therapy for…

Reports that aggregate studies on alcohol aversion therapy tended to support a moderate level of treatment impact that may have noteworthy practical import. Emetics appeared to generate fairly consistent findings; a paralysis-inducing chemical may produce variable results. (Author/NRB)

Insulin-dependent diabetic children and their parents were trained in behavioral self management and conducted behavior change projects designed to enhance compliance with the medical regimen and reduce diabetes-related conflicts. Participating families experienced fewer arguments concerning diabetes, and the children displayed an increase in…

Two cases demonstrate the effectiveness of using anxiety reduction/shaping techniques to help anxious, shy, or withdrawn students develop relationships with their teachers. One case highlights the difficulties sometimes encountered by teachers trying to change their behavior. (CL)

A national survey of behavior modification procedures used by school psychologists is reported. Respondents were asked to indicate the type of exposure, use, and inclusion of data collection procedures for 18 behavioral techniques. Conditional probabilities between type of exposure and use found strong relationships between supervision and…

The effectiveness of applied behavioral programming in teaching lip closure was investigated with three severely retarded students (9-13 years old) with oral motor dysfunction. Results revealed dramatic increases in functional lip closure when an appropriate adaptive device was combined with behavioral intervention. Functional lip closure…