This study examined the effectiveness of lectures, prompts, and contracts in promoting maternal safety behaviours. The term maternal safety behaviours refers to any actions that mothers perform which will help prevent injuries to children, such as supervising toddlers near a swimming pool or storing poisons so that they are out of reach. Fifty-six mothers participated in a safety education program in one of four groups: (a) waiting-list control, (b) standard safety lecture, (c) lecture plus prompts (check-list), and (d) lecture plus prompts and contract. The results indicated that while there were no significant differences between groups in mothers' self-reported behaviours 6 to 8 weeks after the intervention, a consistent trend in the predicted direction was found. The results are discussed in relation to the need to develop more effective educational strategies based on behavioural techniques to promote parental safety within a minimal intervention framework.

Four sexually abused girls participated in a 12-session group training program focused on improving interpersonal problems identified by the girls' teachers. Prior to and following the intervention, the girls underwent role-play assessment of their behaviour in relevant social situations with peers and teachers, and completed a self-report measures of perceived self-concept. For two of the girls, teachers completed checklists of their behavioural functioning before and after the intervention. On the role-play measure, the girls showed improvement on all of the trained behaviours (with peers and teachers), and evidenced behavioural improvements on untrained (generalisation) scenes. In addition, the girls reported improvements in perceived academic competence, peer functioning, appearance, and global self-concept following the training program. The study provides an example of a behavioural skills-training approach to address interpersonal deficits that may be shown by sexually abused children.

Behavioural momentum refers to the tendency for reinforced behaviour to persist when conditions are altered. Research on persistence with pigeons as subjects has suggested that response rate under steady-state conditions and its persistence when conditions are altered are independent aspects of behaviour, with response rate determined by response-reinforcer contingencies and persistence determined by stimulus-reinforcer contingencies. These results have been replicated with humans in a natural setting, and may therefore be relevant to clinical practice. The following prescriptions are suggested by the research results: (a) To eliminate undesirable behaviour, it is not sufficient to reinforce alternative behaviour in the same setting because this may actually enhance persistence of the undesired response; change to a new setting may also be necessary; (b) to establish desirable behaviour, the behaviour should be reinforced frequently, and to make it persistent, both the therapeutic and natural environments should be highly correlated with reinforcement.

It was with considerable interest that I read the comments on my paper (Lovibond, 1993) offered by our three international colleagues. It is at once apparent from the commentaries that the issues in clinical psychology to which I drew attention are in no way unique to Australia. Quite clearly, however, in Japan behaviour therapy (or CBT) has not yet reached that stage of development where the problems I posed become relevant. For this reason I shall concentrate mainly on the comments of Professors Russo and Tarrier. Each of the commentators, but particularly Dr. Russo, found points of agreement with my statement of the issues, but none expressed support for the program of action I suggested. Surprisingly however, none had alternative solutions to offer.

I believe the most important issue I raised was the threat to the primacy of the scientist-professional model in the education/training/practice of clinical psychologists. Professor Russo clearly shares my concerns here, but Professor Tarrier makes no mention of the scientist-professional model or the need to maintain links with the basic discipline of psychology. From the general tenor of his remarks, I gather that Professor Tarrier does not regard the fate of the scientist-professional model as a major issue, and indeed he seems quite satisfied with the status of clinical psychology in the UK. Interestingly however, the report of the Manpower Planning Advisory Group, which Professor Tarrier quotes at another point, suggests that in the UK “clinical psychologists' roles are seen as ambiguous by others, confused with the roles of other disciplines and further confused by the variety of ways in which psychology services are delivered and practised. The research also found poor promotion of clinical psychologists' contributions to services and an inappropriately low profile in view of the impact that clinical psychologists could be having on the effectiveness of services” (MPAG, 1990, p. 8).

This paper argues for an expansion of the field of behaviour therapy from a predominant focus on individual and family based treatment of problems into the prevention of physical illness at a population level. It outlines criteria which can be used to make rational decisions about which domains behaviour therapists should focus on, it then provides a rationale for placing more emphasis on population based strategies of prevention. The particular contributions which the discipline of behaviour therapy has to offer to such an expanded role are then delineated and the benefits of an expanded role into primary and secondary prevention of physical disease are discussed in relation to past research.

This paper critically examines the recent impact of cognitivism upon the field of clinical psychology, and concludes that certain criteria of scientific adequacy have been compromised. The argument is developed that the introduction of information processing constructs to theoretical models of psychopathology has made a potentially valuable contribution to the discipline; but that the acceptance of mental events as dependent measures has severely undermined the scientific credibility of experimental attempts to evaluate such models. It is proposed that future progress will require the adoption of a particular methodological constraint. Specifically, it is suggested that cognitive explanations of psychopathology can only be tested adequately by evaluating the validity of the behavioural predictions that they generate. Using examples of recent research that has investigated the cognitive characteristics of vulnerability to anxiety and depression, an attempt is made to demonstrate that adherence to this proposed constraint not only is possible, but actually provides a far greater degree of understanding than could be attained through the use of alternative methodologies. It is postulated that the future scientific status of clinical psychology may depend upon our collective response to the issues that are raised in this paper.

A single-case design was used to explore the effects of EMG feedback versus EMG-plus-posture feedback in the treatment of overt symptoms of torticollis in an elderly female patient. It was found that EMG levels of the sternomastoid muscle were inversely related to EMG of the trapezius muscle, rather than systematically related to components of treatment. Resting posture showed a pattern of improvement, especially with regard to shoulder asymmetry and forward flexion. Also, the patient's voluntary control over posture showed marked improvement between pre- and postphases of treatment; this was maintained at follow-up 8 weeks after treatment. Implications are raised for further research, in particular, the importance of assessing multiple aspects of posture and recording EMG from more than one site simultaneously.

Carers observed problem behaviours of two people with intellectual disability in natural settings. Data recorded on Antecedent-Behaviour-Consequence (A-B-C) charts were analysed quantitatively by calculating the relative likelihoods of each target behaviour occurring in different situations. Functional analyses were conducted, and individualised interventions were based on these. In one case, a client behaved differently in different situations. Interventions were introduced to teach the client to emit a different prosocial behaviour in each situation. The second client behaved similarly in two situations, suggesting that the behaviours were functionally equivalent for the client. The behaviours of both clients were interpreted as attention seeking behaviours as both antecedents and consequences involved the provision of attention by carers. However different interventions were used in the two cases, and were effective in reducing target behaviours both immediately and in follow-ups.

While structured behavioural interviews are often used in the assessment of problem behaviours among persons with developmental disabilities, there are no data on the reliability of this assessment methodology. In the present study, the reliability of a 15 item interview protocol was determined by comparing the answers provided by different staff concerning the aggressive behaviours displayed by 18 persons with severe disabilities. Agreement was generally low with an overall mean of 43% across clients and questions. The results suggest that information obtained from structured behavioural interviews should be verified by direct observation.