Used covert sensitization and alcohol education/counseling to eliminate drinking behavior in two motivated offenders in their early twenties who had previously been classified as "alcoholic." In over 24 months for 1 subject, and 9 months for the other, only 1 conviction for 1 of the subjects occurred, which turned out to be minor and…

This 18-month follow-up study builds on the findings of a randomized experimental evaluation that found qualified support for the short-term effectiveness of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) in reducing trauma symptoms among adult female survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). The current study provides preliminary evidence…

A comparison was made between the traditional counterconditioning paradigm and a self-control paradigm of systematic desensitization. College students reporting high test anxiety and indicating interest in receiving treatment were assigned to counterconditioning, self-control, or wait-list control conditions. As predicted, self-control procedures…

Degree of transfer and fear change associated with four levels of desensitization, pseudodesensitization, and no treatment were assessed in snakephobic students. Desensitization subjects reported significantly less anxiety than no-treatment controls when repeating their highest pretreatment responses, but were no different from either control…

Results from this study showed that external subjects provided with counseling and systematic desensitization felt that they retained too much control of therapy, while internals generally indicated an optional amount of control in counseling. (Author)

A 13-year-old boy, institutionalized for severe mental retardation, who was found to have obsessive tendencies and an IQ of 71 to 78, was systematically desensitized for phobias associated with ambigous sexual identity. (MC)

Socially anxious males were assigned to a behavioral counseling group involving organized role playing and correctional feedback exercises, counseling plus group desensitization, a "microlab" emphasizing real-life interactions with females, a placebo procedure, and no treatment. Outcome criteria indicated superiority of both reeducative…

The relative effects of imagerial covert rehearsal with attentional shifts and the use of an independent reinforcing agent in a covert reinforcement therapy were compared. A 17-year-old female student, requesting treatment for a snake phobia, served as the subject. The phobia was measured along four dimensions: behavioral approaches to a live…

Anxiety management training (AMT), developed by Suinn and Richardson, is a short-term treatment procedure for alleviating a variety of manifestations of anxiety. It is based on the theory that anxiety or fear responses themselves can become discriminative stimuli and that clients can be conditioned to respond to those stimuli with antagonistic…

This study examined the nature of the anxiety reduction resulting from the administration of a film designed to reduce anxiety about snakes. One-hundred-sixty high school seniors viewed either a modeling film or a control film. As expected, the modeling group, compared to control subjects, experienced significantly greater decrements on…

The purposes of the project were to demonstrate the use of desensitization therapy over a short term to treat test-taking anxiety, and to test the hypothesis that such short-term treatment is effective in dealing with anxiety in mathematics courses and thus enhances and facilitates learning in these courses. The research was designed to utilize…

An attempt is made to determine whether a behaviorally-oriented conditioning approach, "covert sensitization," is more effective in the treatment of alcoholism than the commonly used problem-solving approach, and whether female counselors employing covert sensitization were more successful than males. Thirty-two subjects selected on…

From 300 introductory psychology students, 40 female "snake phobics" were selected to test the hypothesis that distraction paired with fearful imagery is effective in alleviating the "phobia." Subjects were divided into three treatment groups and a control group: H+PI (fear hierarchy plus pleasant imagery as distraction), H+P…

The present study examined the efficacy of rational-emotive psychotherapy and systematic desensitization in the treatment of stuttering. Both therapies, making extensive use of in vivo behavioral assignments, were examined under the presence and absence of in vivo tasks. Results show that rational-emotive therapy was more effective in reducing…

Three programs to improve test-taking performance were evaluated. Subjects who had failed the Chartered Life Underwriter examination were assigned to four treatments: (1) training in test wiseness; (2) systematic densensitization of test anxiety; (3) a combination of (1) and (2); and (4) control. (Author/CTM)