Carmen Luciano

Comparison between an acceptance-based and a cognitive-control-based protocol for coping with pain

This study compares specific acceptance-based strategies and cognitive-control-based strategies for coping with experimentally induced pain. Forty participants were randomly assigned to an acceptance-based protocol (ACT), the goal of which was to disconnect pain-related thoughts and feelings from literal actions, or to a control-based protocol (CONT) that focused on changing or controlling pain-related thoughts and feelings. Participants took part in a nonsense-syllables-matching task that involved successive exposures to increasingly painful shocks. In both conditions, the task involved an overall value-oriented context that encouraged the participants to continue with the task despite the exposure to pain. At times throughout the task, participants were asked to choose to continue with the task and be shocked or stop the task and avoid being shocked. Each choice had specific costs and benefits. Participants performed the task twice, both before and after receiving the assigned experimental protocol. Two measures were obtained at pre- and post-intervention: tolerance of the shocks and self-reports of pain. ACT participants showed significantly higher tolerance to pain and lower believability of experienced pain compared to the CONT condition. Conceptual and clinical implications are discussed.

An Experimental Test of a Cognitive Defusion Exercise: Coping with Negative and Positive Self-Statements.

This study investigated the impact of defusion on a nonclinical sample (n = 60) in the context of negative (e.g., “I am a bad person”) and positive (e.g., “I am whole”) self-statements. Participants were assigned to one of three experimental conditions (Pro-Defusion, Anti-Defusion, and Neutral) that manipulated instructions about the impact of a defusion strategy. Defusion was also manipulated through the visual presentation of the self-statements, with each presented in three formats (Normal, Defused, Abnormal). Participants rated each self-statement for comfort, believability, and willingness. Although the instructions did not affect ratings, negative statements presented in the defused format decreased discomfort and increased willingness and believability relative to the nondefused statements. The findings suggest using defusion strategies in coping with negative psychological content.

Measuring experiential avoidance and psychological inflexibility: the Spanish version of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire - II

BACKGROUND Experiential avoidance and psychological inflexibility have been recently found to be important constructs related to a wide range of psychological disorders and quality of life. The current study presents psychometric and factor structure data concerning the Spanish translation of a general measure of both constructs: the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire - II (AAQ-II). METHOD Six samples, with a total of 712 participants, from several independent studies were analyzed. RESULTS Data were very similar to the ones obtained in the original AAQ-II version. The internal consistency across the different samples was good (between a= .75 and a= .93). The differences between clinical and nonclinical samples were statistically significant and the overall factor analysis yielded to a one-factor solution. The AAQ-II scores were significantly related to general psychopathology and quality of life measures. CONCLUSIONS This Spanish translation of the AAQ-II emerges as a reliable and valid measure of experiential avoidance and psychological inflexibility.

Coping with Pain in the Motivational Context of Values: Comparison between an Acceptance-Based and a Cognitive Control-Based Protocol.

This study compares the effect of an acceptance-based protocol (ACT) and a cognitive control—based (CONT) protocol on three measures of pain coping: tolerance, self-report, and believability. Specific methodological controls were employed to further isolate the role of the value of participating in a pain task, compared to previous investigations on the alteration of the function of aversive stimulation. Twenty participants were randomly assigned to one of the conditions (ACT vs. CONT), and a pre—post design was used. In the ACT condition, the protocol established a relation of coordination between the pain-related thoughts and the actions in the valued direction. In the CONT condition, the protocol established a relation of opposition between the same aspects. Results show an increase in pain tolerance and a reduction of self-reported pain at posttest for both conditions. However, ACT participants showed significantly lower believability of pain than did CONT participants. Conceptual and clinical implications are discussed.

A Derived Transfer of Mood Functions Through Equivalence Relations

The present study investigated the transfer of induced happy and sad mood functions through equivalence relations. Sixteen subjects participated in a combined equivalence and mood induction procedure. In Phase 1, all subjects were trained in 2 conditional discriminations using a matching-to-sample format (i.e., A1-B1, A2-B2, A1-C1, A2-C2). In Phase 2, they were tested for the formation of symmetry (i.e., B1-A1, B2-A2, C1-A1, C2-A2), and equivalence relations (i.e., B1-C1, B2-C2, C1-B1, C2-B2). In Phase 3, a musical mood induction procedure was employed to induce happy and sad mood states in the presence of the B stimuli. Eight subjects were exposed to happy music in the presence of B1, and sad music in the presence of B2, and for the other 8 subjects, this mood induction was reversed. In Phase 4, subjects were exposed to a mood functions test to determine whether the appropriate mood functions had been established with the B stimuli. In Phase 5, they were exposed to a transfer of mood functions test to determine whether the appropriate happy and sad mood functions had transferred via equivalence from the B stimuli to the C stimuli. The mood measures showed that the specific mood functions established in the presence of the B stimuli successfully transferred to the C stimuli for the majority of subjects. This transfer of mood function effect is discussed in terms of its implications for a behavioral understanding of mood changes.

Experiential Avoidance as a Common Psychological Process in European Cultures

Experiential avoidance, the tendency to rigidly escape or avoid private psychological experiences, represents one of the most prominent transdiagnostic psychological processes with a known role in a wide variety of psychological disorders and practical contexts. Experiential avoidance is argued to be based on a fundamental verbal/cognitive process: an overextension of verbal problem solving into the world within. Although cultures apparently differ in their patterns of emotional expression, to the extent that experiential avoidance is based on a fundamental verbal/cognitive process, measures of this process should be comparable across countries, with similar relationships to health outcomes regardless of the language community. This research tests this view in European countries. The psychometric properties of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II, a measure of experiential avoidance, are compared across six languages and seven European countries, for a total of 2,170 nonclinical participants. Multiple group analysis showed that the instrument can be considered invariant across the language samples. The questionnaire constitutes a unidimensional instrument with similar relationships to psychopathology, and has good and very similar psychometric properties in each assessed country. Experiential avoidance reveals not just as transdiagnostic, but also as a transcultural process independent of a specific language community.

TRANSFER OF AVERSIVE RESPONDENT ELICITATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH EQUIVALENCE RELATIONS

The present study investigates the transfer of aversively conditioned respondent elicitation through equivalence classes, using skin conductance as the measure of conditioning. The first experiment is an attempt to replicate Experiment 1 in Dougher, Augustson, Markham, Greenway, and Wulfert (1994), with different temporal parameters in the aversive conditioning procedure employed. Match-to-sample procedures were used to teach 17 participants two 4-member equivalence classes. Then, one member of one class was paired with electric shock and one member of the other class was presented without shock. The remaining stimuli from each class were presented in transfer tests. Unlike the findings in the original study, transfer of conditioning was not achieved. In Experiment 2, similar procedures were used with 30 participants, although several modifications were introduced (formation of five-member classes, direct conditioning with several elements of each class, random sequences of stimulus presentation in transfer tests, reversal in aversive conditioning contingencies). More than 80% of participants who had shown differential conditioning also showed the transfer of function effect. Moreover, this effect was replicated within subjects for 3 participants. This is the first demonstration of the transfer of aversive respondent elicitation through stimulus equivalence classes with the presentation of transfer test trials in random order. The latter prevents the possibility that transfer effects are an artefact of transfer test presentation order.

The impact of acceptance-based versus avoidance-based protocols on discomfort.

This study aimed to isolate the conditions under which aversive stimulation is experienced as more or less discomforting/unpleasant. Discomfort was induced by playing loud noises through headphones while participants performed computer tasks. We employed 4 main conditions. Condition 1: the acceptance-based protocol (ACT), intended to integrate discomfort in a valued direction, was implemented before the Inclusion Task (task performance could continue despite the presence of the noise). Subsequently, the experiential avoidance-based protocol (EA), intended to promote a relation of opposition between discomfort and valued actions, was implemented before the Opposition Task (task performance was suspended until the participants eliminated the sounds). Condition 2: this order was reversed. Conditions 3 and 4: the tasks were presented without any protocol. The ACT protocol produced the lowest level of discomfort, particularly when it was implemented before participants had experimental experience in trying to control discomfort. Two postcontrol conditions confirmed this result. Implications for prevention and treatment of psychological suffering are discussed.

Verbal Regulation of Motivational States

The motivational function exerted by verbal antecedents has been extensively approached from a theoretical perspective and within the direct conditioning paradigm. However, there is little research concerning the alteration of the motivational function via verbal means. The current study presents 2 consecutive experiments in which the role of the verbal context in the alteration of different motivational states was examined. In the first experiment, a protocol consisting of a story about feeling hot and thirsty was administered individually to 5 children, 6 to 7 years old. After the implementation of the protocol, all children reported feeling thirstier than before the implementation and behaved in accordance with this report. In the second experiment with 5 other children, this effect was replicated with a different motivational state (physical restriction). More importantly, in a second phase with the same children, the effect was prevented when the thirst protocol was presented in a verbal context that was incoherent with feeling thirsty. Several verbal contexts in altering motivational functions, as well as some clinical implications, are discussed.

Human Schedule Performance, Protocol Analysis, and the "Silent Dog" Methodology

The purpose of the current experiment was to investigate the role of private verbal behavior on the operant performances of human adults, using a protocol analysis procedure with additional methodological controls (the “silent dog” method). Twelve subjects were exposed to fixed ratio 8 and differential reinforcement of low rate 3-s schedules. For 6 subjects, verbal self-reports were recorded concurrently during exposure to the reinforcement schedules. Results showed a significant relationship between certain types of rules and task performances, and especially between counting and schedule-sensitive performance. A detailed analysis also suggested that counting facilitated the discrimination of programmed contingencies in the current task. Suggestions are offered for further research involving the use of the protocol analysis methodology.