The present investigation was conducted to evaluate the hypothesis
that in the context of assertion training, client anxiety will interact with treatment modality in such a fashion that high anxiety individuals will benefit more from a cognitively oriented treatment than traditional skills training procedures, whereas low anxiety individuals will obtain equivalent therapeutic gain from the two treatment approaches.
Twenty-eight male and female college undergraduates seeking assertion training were dichotimized into low and high anxiety categories
on the basis of the discomfort scale of Gambrill and Richey's Assertion Inventory. Subjects within both categories were then randomly
assigned to two treatment conditions: behavioural skills training (ST), and cognitive behaviour modification (CBM). The ST condition included components of instruction, modelling, social feedback,
and behavioural rehearsal. The CBM procedure was derived originally
from the self-instructional training procedure employed by Meichenbaum in the treatment of test anxiety. It included components of didactic presentation, training in the discrimination and systematic
observation of self-statements, training in the modification of maladaptive cognitive processes, and the implementation of cognitive coping strategies and task-relevant self-statements. Both treatment conditions were run in a group format and consisted of six, two hour sessions. All subjects were assessed prior to and after treatment on self-report and behavioural measures of assertion and anxiety.
Experimental support was obtained for a modified version of the original hypothesis. While high anxiety subjects tended to benefit more from CBM than from ST in the phenomenal realm, this trend was reversed on the behavioural measures where ST was more effective. Results of the study are explained in terms of a theoretical analysis of the nature of anxiety, and implications for future treatment programmes
are discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/21099 |
| Date | January 1978 |
| Creators | Safran, Jeremy David |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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