Esta es la versión de autor del artículo publicado en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in:Behavior Therapy 44.4 (2013): 625-638 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2013.08.001 Copyright: © Association for Behavioral and Cognitive TherapiesEl acceso a la versión del editor puede requerir la suscripción del recurso Access to the published version may require subscription In this study we analyzed 65 fragments of session recordings in which a cognitive behavioral therapist employed the Socratic method with her patients. Specialized coding instruments were used to categorize the verbal behavior of the psychologist and the patients. First the fragments were classified as more or less successful depending on the overall degree of concordance between the client's verbal behavior and the therapeutic objectives. Then the fragments were submitted to sequential analysis so as to discover regularities linking the patient's verbal behavior and the therapist's responses to it. Important differences between the more and the less successful fragments involved the therapist's approval or disapproval of verbalizations that approximated therapeutic goals. These approvals and disapprovals were associated with increases and decreases, respectively, in the client's behavior. These results are consistent with the existence, in this particular case, of a process of shaping through which the therapist modifies the patient's verbal behavior in the overall direction of his or her chosen therapeutic objectives.

Depending on how the client responds the results in this study present a starting point for the study of the functional sequences that form the basis of therapeutic change.

Resumen: En el presente trabajo llevamos a cabo un análisis del cliente centrándonos en la actividad principal que se desempeña en sesión: hablar. Utilizando metodología observacional realizamos un estudio topográfico de la conducta verbal de los clientes a través del desarrollo de un instrumento de medida generado por el grupo de investigación: el Sistema de Categorización de la Conducta Verbal del Cliente (SISC-CVC). Se observaron y registraron 92 sesiones terapéuticas procedentes de 19 casos tratados por 9 terapeutas distintos. Los resultados muestran que, en líneas generales, el cliente principalmente ofrece información descriptiva relevante para la terapia, muestra su aceptación y entendimiento ante verbalizaciones del terapeuta cuya finalidad sea informar, motivar o instruir y expresa en mucha mayor medida contenidos relacionados con el cambio clínico frente a contenidos alejados de los objetivos perseguidos. Podemos concluir, además, que la conducta verbal de los clientes varía en función de la actividad terapéutica que se esté llevando a cabo y es independiente de la problemática tratada, las caracterís-ticas personales del cliente o el estilo terapéutico del clínico. Palabras clave: Conducta verbal; contexto clínico; metodología observacional; investigación de procesos; cliente.Title: Analysis of the client's verbal behavior during the therapeutic process. Abstract: In this paper we conduct an analysis of the client behavior focusing on the main activity that is performed in session: talking. Using observational methodology we performed a topographical study of clients' verbal behavior through the development of a measuring instrument by our research group: Categorization system of the interaction of client´s verbal behavior during the session (SISC-CVC). 92 clinical sessions from 19 cases treated by 9 therapists were observed and recorded. The results show that, in general, the client mainly provides descriptive information relevant to therapy, shows acceptance and understanding to the therapist's verbalizations aiming to inform, motivate or instruct, and expresses more frequently contents related to clinical change compared to contents opposed to the objectives pursued. We can also conclude that the clients' verbal behavior varies depending on the therapeutic activity that is taking place and is independent of the problems treated, the personal characteristics of the client or the clinician's therapeutic style. Key words: Verbal behaviour; clinical setting; observational methodology; processes research; client. IntroducciónEl cambio psicológico constituye un proceso complejo en el cual interactúan una gran diversidad de factores (Garfield, 1990;Kazdin, 2009;Santibañez et al., 2008). A lo largo de las últimas décadas de investigación en psicoterapia se han realizado numerosos trabajos orientados al esclarecimiento del cambio terapéutico y muchos de ellos se han centrado en el estudio de alguno de los protagonistas de la terapia. La tendencia habitual de dichos trabajos ha sido establecer como objeto de...

The goal of this study is to analyze the verbal interaction that takes place between client and therapist over the course of a clinical intervention so as to analyze the potential learning processes that may be responsible for changes in the client's behavior. A total of 92 sessions were analyzed, corresponding to 19 clinical cases treated by 9 therapists specializing in behavioral therapy. The variables considered were therapist and client verbal behaviors, and these were categorized according to their possible functions and/or morphologies. The Observer XT software was used as a tool for the observational analysis. The results led to the conclusion that the therapist responds differentially to client verbalizations, modifying the verbal contingencies as his or her client content approaches or becomes more distant from therapeutic objectives. These results suggest the possible existence of verbal "shaping" processes through which the therapist guides the client's verbal behavior toward more adaptive forms. In addition, this study proposes an alternative to the traditional controversy regarding the relevance of the therapeutic relationship versus the treatment techniques used to explain clinical change. This article suggests that such differentiation is unnecessary because the therapeutic relationship and the treatment techniques should act in the same manner, this is, in providing the context for the occurrence of what is truly therapeutic, namely, the learning processes.