Biomedical subjects

Scott T Gaynor

Publications and source records attributed to Scott T Gaynor.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Measuring homework compliance in cognitive-behavioral therapy for adolescent depression: review, preliminary findings, and implications for theory and practice.

Despite the importance placed on completion of extra-session homework in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), a review of the available literature suggests there is much about the nature of homework compliance that remains to be empirically evaluated. This is especially true among youth receiving CBT. The present study begins to address how best to measure homework compliance and offers a fine-grained, single-case analysis of homework compliance during acute treatment with depressed adolescents. The results demonstrate that 56% of homework assignments were completed. Also observed was substantial within-subject temporal variability in homework compliance and a tendency for compliance to decrease during the course of treatment. These data call into question the adequacy of any static aggregate measure of homework compliance and have implications for both researchers and clinicians.

Achievement↗

PubMed2003

The prevalence and impact of large sudden improvements during adolescent therapy for depression: a comparison across cognitive-behavioral, family, and supportive therapy.

This study assessed the treatment specificity and impact on outcome of large, abrupt symptomatic improvements occurring prior to and during cognitive-behavioral, family, and supportive therapy. Eighty-seven depressed adolescents receiving at least 8 therapy sessions were included. Abrupt large decreases in depressive symptoms were identified by changes in weekly Beck Depression Inventory scores. Overall, 28% experienced a pretreatment gain and 39% a sudden within-treatment gain. Both types of gains were associated with superior outcome on self-report and interviewer ratings of depression. Among those participants failing to experience a pretreatment or sudden within-treatment gain, cognitive-behavioral therapy produced the superior outcomes. These findings suggest pretreatment and sudden within-treatment gains are important therapeutic events worthy of further investigation.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

The generality of selective observing.

Four rats obtained food pellets by poking a key and 5-s presentations of the discriminative stimuli by pressing a lever. Every 1 or 2 min, the prevailing schedule of reinforcement for key poking alternated between rich (either variable-interval [VI] 30 s or VI 60 s) and lean (either VI 240 s, VI 480 s, or extinction) components. While the key was dark (mixed-schedule stimulus), no exteroceptive stimulus indicated the prevailing schedule. A lever press (i.e., an observing response), however, illuminated the key for 5 s with either a steady light (S+), signaling the rich reinforcement schedule, or a blinking light (S-), signaling the lean reinforcement schedule. One goal was to determine whether rats would engage in selective observing (i.e., a pattern of responding that maintains contact with S+ and decreases contact with S-). Such a pattern was found, in that a 5-s presentation of S+ was followed relatively quickly by another observing response (which likely produced another 5-s period of S+), whereas exposure to S- resulted in extended breaks from observing. Additional conditions demonstrated that the rate of observing remained high when lever presses were effective only when the rich reinforcement schedule was in effect (S+ only condition), but decreased to a low level when lever presses were effective only during the lean reinforcement component (S- only condition) or when lever presses had no effect (in removing the mixed stimulus or presenting the multiple-schedule stimuli). These findings are consistent with relativistic conceptualizations of conditioned reinforcement and extend the generality of selective observing to procedures in which the experimenter controls the duration of stimulus presentations, the schedule components both offer intermittent food reinforcement, and rats serve as subjects.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Response rate viewed as engagement bouts: resistance to extinction.

Rats obtained food pellets by nose poking a lighted key, the illumination of which alternated every 50 s during a session between blinking and steady, signaling either a relatively rich (60 per hour) or relatively lean (15 per hour) rate of reinforcement. During one training condition, all the reinforcers in the presence of the rich-reinforcement signal were response dependent (i.e., a variable-interval schedule); during another condition only 25% were response dependent (i.e., a variable-time schedule operated concurrently with a variable-interval schedule). An extinction session followed each training block. For both kinds of training schedule, and consistent with prior results, response rate was more resistant to extinction in the presence of the rich-reinforcement signal than in the presence of the lean-reinforcement signal. Analysis of interresponse-time distributions from baseline showed that differential resistance to extinction was not related to baseline differences in the rate of initiating response bouts or in the length of bouts. Also, bout-initiation rate (like response rate) was most resistant to extinction in the presence of the rich-reinforcement signal. These results support the proposal of behavioral momentum theory (e.g., Nevin & Grace, 2000) that resistance to extinction in the presence of a discriminative stimulus is determined more by the stimulus-reinforcer (Pavlovian) than by the stimulus-response-reinforcer (operant) contingency.

Animals↗