Traditional treatment for insomnia has been chemotherapy-- despite short-term value and side effects. Need for an alternative has led to research on behavioral treatment methods for insomnia. Relaxation training has consistently produced effective results, but the limited research on biofeedback and stimulus control suggests that they too may be viable alternate treatment methods. The present research investigated electromyogram (EMG) biofeedback, pseudo-EMG biofeedback, relaxation, training, and stimulus control as methods of treating sleep-onset insomnia. Volunteers consisting of 12 males and 24 females were recruited through newspaper advertisements. Subjects had no known physical cause for insomnia and were either free of sleeping medication or kept their dosage constant during the study. Subjects were matched for age and sex, randomly assigned to one of the four treatment groups, then randomly assigned to one of three therapists. Results indicated that pretreatment EMG scores for the four groups were high but not significantly different-- while post treatment EMG scores were not significantly reduced. Pretreatment sleep-latency measures were high, but not significantly different from each other. Post treatment latency measures were significantly reduced, but not significantly different from each other. Correlation between EMG-change scores and sleep-latency-change measures was non-significant. Pretreatment nightly awakenings for the four groups were not significantly different. Post treatment awakenings for the four groups were significantly reduced, but not significantly different from each other. There were not significant interactions for therapist or treatment with any of the dependent variables.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc501025 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Hughes, Ronald C. |
| Contributors | Hughes, Howard, 1937-, Robb, George Paul, 1922-, Harrell, Ernest H., Aronson, Harriet, Hughes, Anita E. |
| Publisher | North Texas State University |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | v, 79 leaves : ill., Text |
| Rights | Public, Hughes, Ronald C., Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. |
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