We studied 120 tape recorded psychotherapy sessions representing early, middle, and late interviews with 20 clients. Clients were divided into successful (n -10) and unsuccessful (n = 10) outcome groups on the basis of clinicians' ratings of pre-and post-Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory data. Raters scored the response units of clients and therapists and labeled as complementary the following elicitation-response sequences: dominance followed by submissive behavior, submissive behavior followed by dominance, friendliness followed by friendliness, and hostility followed by hostility. Comparisons between outcome groups showed no differences in therapist complementarity during the early stage (as predicted); a significantly lower level of therapist complementarity for the successful group during the middle stage (as predicted); no differences during the last stage (contrary to prediction). Furthermore, during the early stage of therapy more disturbed clients elicited greater therapist complementarity (as predicted).One of the major tenets of relationship psychotherapy is that the client and therapist have a reciprocal impact on each other, that is, the behavior of each participant tends to influence the behavior of the other (

This study examined the relationship between age and inhibitory functioning within a sample of older adults ranging in age from 60 to 85 years old. On the basis of earlier research, and confirmed by factor analysis, measures typically referred to as frontal lobe tasks were used as measures of inhibitory functioning. Findings demonstrated that inhibitory processes continued to decline with advancing age within the older sample. In addition, the role of inhibition in age-related performance deficits on a verbal list learning measure and an attention measure was examined. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that inhibition accounted for a significant proportion of the age-related variance on the two cognitive measures, whereas measures of reading speed accounted for a smaller proportion of the variance. In addition, when inhibition was first covaried out, reading speed no longer accounted for a significant proportion of the age-related variance. It is argued that inhibition is an important contributor to age-related performance decrements in cognition.AN increasingly central notion in attention theory is that inhibitory processes act in concert with excitatory processes to control the contents of working memory. Inhibitory processes help prevent irrelevant stimuli from interfering with the efficient processing of target information in a number of ways (e.g., Hasher & Zacks, 1988;Tipper, 1985;Tipper, Weaver, & Houghton, 1994). Specifically, inhibition can prevent the allocation of attention to irrelevant or distracting information in the internal or external environment, thereby allowing for a focus on the relevant task or goal. Further, as task demands change, inhibition serves to suppress activation of stimuli that were previously important but now are no longer the target of processing (Hasher & Zacks, 1988;. Finally, more recently it has been proposed that inhibition serves to restrain prepo-tent responses from occurring immediately, allowing for an initial evaluation as to their appropriateness (Hasher, Zacks, & May, 1999). When inhibitory processes are not operating efficiently, irrelevant or distracting information can invade working memory, possibly resulting in lowered performance due to interference effects and response competition. These interfering effects can occur at both the encoding and retrieval stages.It has recently been postulated that deficits in inhibitory functioning may account for agerelated performance decrements exhibited in a variety of cognitive tasks (Hasher & Zacks, 1988; Hasher et al., 1999;. This view maintains that inhibitory mechanisms become inefficient with age, causing a disruption to working memory. Working memory has been theorized to be important for successful performance in many cognitive domains, including memory, language comprehension and speech production, and planning and problem solving, among others (Baddeley & Hitch, 1994). Given the importance of Address correspondence to Carol Persad, Neuropsychology Division, University of Michigan, C480 Med Inn, 1500...

This study evaluated the use of Jacobson, Follette, and Revenstorf's (1984) criteria for clinical significance in psychotherapy data analysis. The hypothesis that a group of psychotherapy clients showing clinically significant symptom changes would report greater satisfaction and benefit from psychotherapy than would a group of clients who changed moderately or not at all was supported. Statistical and clinical significance are defined, and the concept of when meaningful change has occurred in psychotherapy is discussed in relation to clinical significance. Jacobson, Follette, and Revenstorf (1984) proposed criteria for evaluating the clinical significance of change in psychotherapy outcome research. These efforts have stimulated much interest. In a major review of psychotherapy research, Goldfried, Greenberg, and Marmar (1990) considered the development of methods for demonstrating clinical significance to be a major advance in outcome research. Jacobson and Truax (1991) stressed the importance of establishing a convention for the evaluation of psychotherapy outcome that could be applied to any clinical disorder. They claimed that clinical significance has arrived as such a measure.The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the use of clinical significance in psychotherapy data analysis. In addition, the study attempted to support the thesis that clinical significance captures an important aspect of improvement that needs to be reported in psychotherapy outcome research. Clinical significance refers to the effect of a treatment procedure on a single subject (Hugdahl & Ost, 1981;Jacobson et al., 1984). Clinically significant change implies achieving a level of functioning comparable to the client's nonpathological peers (Kazdin & Wilson, 1978;Kendall & Norton-Ford, 1982;Jacobson et al., 1984). Jacobson et al. (1984) proposed a two-condition evaluation to judge the criterion of clinical significance. The first condition was a measure of meaningful change that determines whether the client has moved from the dysfunctional to the functional range. The condition of meaningful change was evaluated by asking whether the level of functioning posttreatment suggested that the subject was statistically more likely to be in the functional than in the dysfunctional population.

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A number of methodological questions have been raised about the reliability and validity of measuring executive functioning (EF) across multiple time points. In this study, correlational and latent-variable analyses were used to examine test-retest reliability of 5 common measures of EF and the stability of a latent EF construct. One hundred eighteen nondemented older adults were tested twice over a 4- to 8-week period. Findings demonstrated modest reliability of individual EF measures but very high stability of a latent EF construct. Relative contributions of each measure to the latent EF factor did not change across measurement trials. In addition, age-related effects on EF were similar at the 2 time points and were within the expected range. Implications for future studies of EF are discussed.