Geary S. Alford

Effects of token economy on neurotic depression: An experimental analysis

The hypothesis that work behaviors on a token economy program wouldbe incompatible with emission of depressive behaviors was examined in an experimental single case design in three neurotically depressed patients. The results supported the hypothesis in that observable depression was markedly diminished during the token reinforcement condition. By contrast, increases in depression were noted during baseline phases. It is argued that token economy work activities facilitated greater social stimulation, thus increasing the likehihood of elicitation and reinforcement of target behaviors under study.

Treatment of hysterical vomiting by modification of social contingencies: A case study

Abstract An extinction procedure (withdrawal of attention and social contact) was successfully used in the treatment of a patient with a 10-yr history of vomiting repeatedly after every meal. No special diet or chemotherapy was employed. Theraphy consisted of staff members, and subsequently other patients, avoiding and ignoring the patient whenever she vomited or reported feeling nauseated. Data were obtained on frequency and latency of vomiting. A 7-month follow-up revealed that the patient had vomited only once since discharge.

Stimulus interference and conditioned inhibition of auditory hallucinations

Abstract Auditory hallucinations were temporarily stopped by conversation and lastingly stopped by faradic aversive conditioning. A 1-yr follow-up of the patient revealed no evidence of recurrence.

Hallucinatory-Delusional Verbalizations Modification in a Chronic Schizophrenic by Self-Control and Cognitive Restructuring

Hallucinatory-delusional verbalizations in a 40-year-old schizophrentic female were temporarily reduced by social interference and by self-control instructions. When instructed to self-control or not as she elected, the patient continued to emit a high frequency of hallucinatory-delusional verbalizations. During these phases of treatment no change in target behaviors was observed in the patients behavior on the ward. Following two verbal therapy sessions in which attempts were made to change the hypothetical intrinsic valence of the hallucinatory-delusional behavior from positive to negative, a marked deceleration of these target behaviors occurred.

Masturbatory extinction of deviant sexual arousal: A case study *

This report describes the treatment of a 27-year-old male heterosexual who exhibited strong sexual arousal to pedophilic and hebephilic, as well as adult female sexual stimuli. Treatment involved repeated presentation of examples of deviant sexual stimuli (via pictorial slides and audiotapes) in the absence of high-level sexual excitation and orgasm. Significant sexual excitation and orgasm in the presence of the deviant stimuli were avoided by having the patient masturbate to orgasm to normative stimuli, then immediately again to little or no nontactile sexual stimuli, immediately prior to 1 hour of exposures to the deviant classes of stimuli during which he engaged in physical self-stimulation of his genitalia. Across the following forty such treatment sessions, sexual arousal, assessed by strain-gauge monitoring of penile tumescence, diminished markedly in response to both pedophilic and hebephilic sexual stimuli, while arousal to adult female stimuli remained generally high. The interdependency of pedophilic and hebephilic arousal patterns was found higher than anticipated and rendered the planned multiple-baseline design into an AB design. This methodological error compromised unequivocal attribution of results. The proposed procedure is discussed within the context of classical conditioning and extinction.

Covert aversion of two interrelated deviant sexual practices: Obscence phone calling and exhibitionism. A single case analysis

The interrelationship among three distinct sexual behavior and arousal patterns (obscene phone calling, exhibitionism, and heterosexual arousal) were studied in an adult male. A multiple baseline design was used to evaluate the effects of covert sensitization on the two deviant patterns. Physiological and self-report of arousal to all three classes of sexual stimuli were taken throughout treatment, after discharge, and at 10-month follow-up. Results indicated that covert sensitization for obscene phone calling partially diminished arousal to the exhibitionistic stimuli, as well. When both deviant behaviors were treated, rapid and stable reductions in both physiological and self-report measures of deviant arousal were obtained, while arousal to heterosexual stimuli remained relatively high and essentially unchanged. Treatment gains were sustained during a 10-month follow-up period during which collateral reports revealed no other evidence of relapse. Additional findings included heart rate-penile tumescence changes consistent with an autonomic conditioning component model of covert sensitization.

Differences and Similarities in Development of Drinking Behavior Between Alcoholic Offspring of Alcoholics and Alcoholic Offspring of Non-Alcoholics

Self-reported initial, early, and long-term drinking behaviors, experiences, and consequences were obtained from male alcoholics completing inpatient treatment. Subjects were recruited and selected on the basis that they met DSM-III criteria for diagnosis of alcohol dependency and that their biological fathers were alcoholic (FHP; Family History Positive) or that they had no biological family history of alcoholism (FHN; Family History Negative). Results indicated that FHP subjects rated their initial taste of beer higher than FHN subjects, that FHP subjects began tasting and subsequently regularly drinking alcohol at an earlier age than FHN subjects and that there was significantly shorter elapsed time between initiating regular drinking and developing alcoholic-symptomatic problems in living among FHP alcoholics than FHN alcoholics. Although there were a few other significant differences, the drinking-behavioral histories of the two groups were remarkably similar and parallel. Taken together, results suggest that familial risk factors primarily influence the rate at which alcoholic drinking and alcoholism develop, rather than the form or pattern of alcoholic drinking.

Faking "Turn-Ons" and "Turn-Offs" The Effects of Competitory Covert Imagery on Penile Tumescence Responses to Diverse Extrinsic Sexual Stimulus Materials

This report describes a single-case study of the differential effects of neutral, moderately aversive, or highly aversive covert images used in covert sensitization on physiological arousal to homosexual stimuli in a bisexual male. During the experiment, data became confounded after it was revealed that the patient had begun using aversive scenes from treatment sessions to block his sexual arousal in assessment sessions. Subsequent investigation determined that this patient could block sexual arousal to extrinsic stimuli presented in laboratory assessment by covertly attending to neutral or aversive stimuli. He could attain sexual arousal with 90% or greater erection in the presence of sexually neutral stimuli by covertly attending to sexually evocative imagery. Implications for treatment and assessment of sexual deviation are discussed.

A critical examination of gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase as a biochemical marker for alcohol abuse

Abstract A total of 101 male and female subjects from two alcohol abuse treatment settings were evaluated for alcohol abuse using the enzyme gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT). Rigorous screening procedures for physical health and abusive drinking were employed in an effort to test GGTs effectiveness as a diagnostic tool for alcohol abuse on a sample of healthy, recently abusive individuals. Results did not support the hypothesis that GGT may be used as a singular biochemical marker for alcohol abuse.

Behavior Therapy and the Good Life

In his 1979 presidential address to the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Barlow (1979) reviewed predictions made 10 years earlier by several prominent psychologists that behavior therapy would “run its course and wither away by the end of the decade.” Clearly, that did not happen. Indeed, during the past decade the domain of behavior therapy has undergone a diversification and expansion, the rapidity of which is unprecedented in the field of social-influence therapies. Commentators on the advancement of behavior therapy have observed the confusion such growth in direction and size can generate within the field, even with respect to a basic definition of what constitutes behavior and behavior therapy (e.g., Kazdin, 1979). By the middle 1970s, phenomena occuring inside the brain and conceptualized as cognitions were legitimized as cognitive behavior and considered amenable to cognitive behavior therapeutic influence (e.g., Mahoney, 1974), though such conceptual models were eschewed by most early behavior modifiers. Not only have the set of phenomena considered legitimate objects of behavioral scientific enquiry expanded, but we are no longer so sure of the basic principles by which current behavioral procedures work. Kazdin (1979) has noted the lack of correspondence between even the simplest and most basic behavior modification procedures and their alleged experimentally derived theoretical underpinnings. Yet, it has been just this implicit recognition that empirical, clinical pragmatics precede theoretical consistency, if not uniformity, that has allowed, indeed encouraged the growth and diversification of behavior therapy, foiling predictions of its demise through self-inflicted sterility.