Biomedical subjects

L Gershman

Publications and source records attributed to L Gershman.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1991

Enhancement of physicians' treatment of illness by behavior therapy.

The author criticizes physicians who cling to the conventional belief that successful diagnosis and treatment of physical symptoms can only be handled by medical interventions. He describes the behavioral treatment of three patients who had been treated for almost two years unsuccessfully by medical specialists and who improved significantly with behavioral interventions. A physician who lacks the psychological information that illuminates the environmental and personal contingencies that help to initiate, support, and maintain a patient's symptoms--information such as that obtained by a behavioral analysis--risks deriving a deceptive image of the illness, extends treatment time, prolongs suffering, augments the risk of iatrogenic complications, and increases treatment costs.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1985

Cognitive processing differences between obese and nonobese subjects.

Research in the area of human obesity has investigated a variety of factors believed to affect food intake. The present study measured free recall of food and nonfood words to explore the cognitive processing of food and nonfood stimuli by 60 obese and nonobese female subjects. Intentional learning conditions were employed to test the obesity compliancy effect, and incidental learning conditions were employed to control for the obesity compliancy effect while assessing recall. No significant memory differences were found. The findings imply that the obese and nonobese do not differ in their cognitive processing of food stimuli as measured by memory. More importantly, the study failed to demonstrate an obesity compliancy effect for memory. The obese and nonobese subjects did differ significantly in their weight fluctuation rating, and this finding was compared to Herman's restrained eating theory. Implications for future research and therapy in the area of human obesity are discussed.

Body Weight↗

PubMed1983

Physiological responses to rational-emotive self-verbalizations.

This study tested Albert Ellis' Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) theory which predicts that cognitive beliefs, not the stimulus situation, generate human emotions. According to RET, emotions created by rational beliefs are adaptive, while irrational beliefs result in an unadaptive anxiety level. Results demonstrated that at high levels of problem relevance there was (1) a significantly greater GSR in direct response to the stimulus situation, and also to irrational statements, than to rational and control statements, and (2) no significant difference between rational and neutral control statements. The authors argue that these results are more parsimoniously explained by conditioning theory than by RET theory.

Adult↗