Therapist-patient interactions in 16 cases of brief psychotherapy were examined. Three types of therapist intervention (patient-therapist interpretations, patient-significant other interpretations, and clarifications) were compared in terms of the frequency of patient affective or defensive behavior that occurred in the three minutes following each. In addition, therapist-intervention and patient-response episodes were investigated to determine their relationship to outcome at termination of therapy. Results indicate that patient-therapist interpretations followed by patient affect bears a significant relationship to improvement at termination, whereas an intervention (of any type) followed by defensiveness correlates negatively with outcome. These findings suggest that an examination of patient-therapist interaction episodes may be more productive than examining process variables in isolation.
The "pseudoneglect" phenomenon initially described by Bowers and Heilman (1980) was examined in the context of a cancellation task. Normal subjects were administered cancellation tasks under a high arousal condition with target and foils which were intended to activate left hemisphere (verbal) processes or right hemisphere (spatial) processes. Significant right lateralized inattention was present on the spatial stimuli. The verbal stimuli failed to produce significant lateralized inattention, although it produced moderate left inattention among right-handed males. The results are consistent with literature identifying the right hemisphere as dominant for attention.
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