Objective: Fear reactivity during exposure is a commonly used indicator of learning and overall therapy outcome. The objective of this study was to assess the predictive value of fear reactivity during exposure using multimodal indicators and an advanced analytical design. We also investigated the degree to which treatment condition (cognitive…

Objective: Cardiovascular reactivity to laboratory stressors was investigated as (a) a moderator of associations of partner aggression with affective functioning, alcohol problems, and parenting; and (b) a consequence of partner aggression. Method: Cohabiting adult couples (N = 453) with 3- to 7-year-old children were recruited by random digit…

Objective: There are numerous theories of panic disorder, each proposing a unique pathway of change leading to treatment success. However, little is known about whether improvements in proposed mediators are indeed associated with treatment outcomes and whether these mediators are specific to particular treatment modalities. Our purpose in this…

Objective: This study investigated the association between hostility and health and whether it is moderated by the quality of an individual's primary romantic relationship. Method: Longitudinal data were provided by 184 African Americans, including 166 women. Participants averaged 38 years old and were married or in long-term marriagelike…

Objective: Cognitive models of panic disorder suggest that change in catastrophic misinterpretations of bodily sensations will predict symptom reduction. To examine change processes, we used a repeated measures design to evaluate whether the trajectory of change in misinterpretations over the course of 12-week cognitive behavior therapy is related…

Self-inflicted injury in adolescence indicates significant emotional and psychological suffering. Although data on the etiology of self-injury are limited, current theories suggest that the emotional lability observed among self-injuring adolescents results from complex interactions between individual biological vulnerabilities and environmental…

Investigated whether behavior modification would improve short- and long-term results of weight control programs for obese patients (N=53) with Type II diabetes. The behavior modification group lost more weight than the nutrition education or standard-care condition during the 16-week treatment, but at 16-month follow-up, weight loss differences…

Worry was found to be more highly negatively related to examination grades than was Emotionality or pulse rate and worry was more highly negatively related to expectancy than was Emotionality. However, pulse rate was no more highly related to Emotionality than to Worry, suggesting that questionnaire and direct measures of autonomic arousal are…

The MAS was administered while drive level was systematically manipulated. Drive state was varied at four levels by the induced muscular tension technique while heart rate (HR) and galvanic skin response (GSR) activity were recorded. No meaningful relationship between MAS scores and HR and GSR activity was observed. The intercorrelation between HR…

Compared physiological effects of progressive relaxation, alpha feedback, and a no-treatment condition. Nonpatients showed more psychophysiological habituation than patients in response to hearing very loud tones and to reaction time tasks. Patients showed greater physiological response to relaxation than nonpatients. After relaxation, autonomic…

A Stimulus satiation technique and gradual reduction approach were compared to a cold turkey approach and a taste aversion technique (special pill to create cigarette aversion). All showed substantial initial reduction, but considerable relapse at a six month followup. (CJ)

Electroencephalograms of 20 alcoholics and 20 nonalcoholics were obtained. Data indicated that alcoholics produced less alpha than nonalcoholics. In one training condition subjects were given accurate biofeedback, whereas in the other condition subjects were given random (noncontingent) feedback. Accurate biofeedback did not result in greater…

This study focuses upon the relationship between phase of the menstrual cycle and sexual arousability. Women (N=133) participated in an experiment that induced sexual arousal by means of an erotic story. Independent factors were use of contraceptive pills versus no contraceptive pills and phase of the menstrual cycle. (Author)

The data on approach to snakes provides srong support for the contention that the behavorial avoidance test is not immune to bias introduced by the operation of situational variables that have usually been allowed to vary in uncontrolled fashion in psychotherapy analogue research. Behavior of test subjects can be influenced not only in terms of…

Examined group differences in self-reporting anxiety for one hundred chronic pain patients, an equal number of college students, and two smaller comparison samples. Pain patients, relative to nonpatients, acknowledged dramatically fewer total signs of anxiety. Also, pain patients endorsed significantly more somatic than cognitive indicators of…