Psychologists have focused on the phenomenon of chemotherapy-related nausea because of the extent of its debilitating effects, which affect compliance with medical regimens, and the more-current belief that some of this nausea may be conditioned. Research with behavioral treatments began with and continue to apply relaxation training. However, attention has moved to distraction strategies recently, with the belief that one active ingredient of relaxation may be distraction. This two-experiment project tested distraction with two types of chemotherapy patients: those with chemotherapy experience (Experiment 1) and patients new to chemotherapy (Experiment 2). An induction and rationale for distraction was provided treatment patients along with a "package" of distractors that included hand-held games, tape recordings and magazines. Orders were given to begin use of distractors when symptoms of nausea began. It was hoped that with all patients the distraction would attenuate nausea. With patients new to chemotherapy, it was hoped distraction would also inhibit conditioning of nausea. The first experiment utilized a pre-test, post-test control group design with sequential assignment to treatment and control groups. Subjects (20 controls, 13 treatment) were followed for two hospitalizations, with treatment subjects given the distraction intervention on the second visit. A regressed change analysis with variables entered hierarchically found no significant differences between treatment and control subjects' levels of nausea. Experiment 2 used a repeated-measures posttest-only design with sequential assignment. Nine control and 10 treatment subjects were each followed for three hospital visits, with treatment subjects using distraction each visit. A mixed factoral design analysis of variance found no significant difference in nausea between control and treatment subjects. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-07, Section: B, page: 2879. / Major Professor: Wallace Albert Kennedy. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77814 |
| Contributors | Winiarski, Mark Gregory., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 94 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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