Acquisition of adaptive skills: psychotherapeutic change in cognitive and dynamic therapies.

We argue that there are important areas of overlap in the types of patient change processes that occur in cognitive therapy and dynamic therapy. These common processes of patient change have been obscured by differences in language and theoretical constructs between the two traditions. We suggest that the acquisition of adaptive skills describes patient change processes that are common to both therapies. More specifically, we propose that the concept of adaptive skills encompasses both the compensatory skills model of cognitive therapy (Barber & DeRubeis, 1989) and some of the patient changes that occur in dynamic therapies. In clarifying these areas of overlap between cognitive and dynamic therapies encompassed by the adaptive skills acquired in both, the present article highlights the fact that the two therapeutic traditions employ radically different techniques to achieve some of the same outcomes. Recognizing the overlap between change processes in the two types of therapy, and adopting a common language for them, allows for further theoretical and empirical investigation of therapy process and outcome.

Measuring adherence and competence of dynamic therapists in the treatment of cocaine dependence.

This article presents the development of a new 82-item rating scale of therapist adherence and competence for supportive-expressive (SE) dynamic psychotherapy for the treatment of cocaine dependence. Sixty-four items are rated for adherence, appropriateness, and quality of prescribed interventions. As part of the pilot/training phase of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Collaborative Cocaine Treatment Study, two independent expert judges rated 32 audiotapes of SE therapy sessions with cocaine-dependent patients, 10 tapes of cognitive therapy (CT) sessions, and 10 tapes of individual drug counseling (IDC) sessions. Reliability was acceptable for adherence but poor for quality and appropriateness. SE therapists used more expressive (interpretative) techniques than did either CT therapists or IDC counselors, and they used more supportive techniques than did IDC counselors.

Visual attention and stimulus identification.

Previous research has provided evidence for parallel stimulus processing in visual search tasks; however, it has frequently been noted that detecting prespecified targets might be accomplished without actually identifying targets and/or distractors. A novel task was employed to require exhaustive identification: Subjects named the highest digit in an array. Reaction times and display size effects in this task were strikingly similar to the conventional search tasks reported here. Manipulation of display size and visual quality was used to test predictions of serial versus parallel encoding models. Display size was additive with two different visual quality factors in the highest digit task, a finding that argues against serial execution of the corresponding stages. Interactions with decision-related factors suggest that visual quality may have affected the rate of character recognition, not just feature extraction. Thus, various aspects of the results seem to strengthen the case for parallel (though perhaps capacity-limited) identification of multiple familiar stimuli. In the General Discussion, it is pointed out that parallel identification need not entail late selection, and some alternative possibilities are suggested.