The differential risk observed in patients with BN might be related to differences in temperament or might be the result of reward sensitization.

Esta es la versión de autor del artículo publicado en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in:Behavior Therapy 44.4 (2013): 625-638 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2013.08.001 Copyright: © Association for Behavioral and Cognitive TherapiesEl acceso a la versión del editor puede requerir la suscripción del recurso Access to the published version may require subscription In this study we analyzed 65 fragments of session recordings in which a cognitive behavioral therapist employed the Socratic method with her patients. Specialized coding instruments were used to categorize the verbal behavior of the psychologist and the patients. First the fragments were classified as more or less successful depending on the overall degree of concordance between the client's verbal behavior and the therapeutic objectives. Then the fragments were submitted to sequential analysis so as to discover regularities linking the patient's verbal behavior and the therapist's responses to it. Important differences between the more and the less successful fragments involved the therapist's approval or disapproval of verbalizations that approximated therapeutic goals. These approvals and disapprovals were associated with increases and decreases, respectively, in the client's behavior. These results are consistent with the existence, in this particular case, of a process of shaping through which the therapist modifies the patient's verbal behavior in the overall direction of his or her chosen therapeutic objectives.

No abstract

Cognitive restructuring, in particular in the form of the Socratic method, is widely used by clinicians. However, little research has been published with respect to underlying processes, which has hindered well-accepted explanations of its effectiveness. The aim of this study is to present a new method of analysis of the Socratic method during cognitive restructuring based on the observation of the therapist's verbal behaviour. Using recordings from clinical sessions, 18 sequences were selected in which the Socratic method was applied by six cognitive-behavioural therapists working at a private clinical centre in Madrid. The recordings involved eight patients requiring therapy for various psychological problems. Observations were coded using a category system designed by the authors and that classifies the therapist's verbal behaviour into seven hypothesized functions based on basic behavioural operations. We used the Observer XT software to code the observed sequences. The results are summarized through a preliminary model which considers three different phases of the Socratic method and some functions of the therapist's verbal behaviour in each of these phases: discriminative and reinforcement functions in the starting phase, informative and motivational functions in the course of the debate, and instructional and reinforcement functions in the final phase. We discuss the long-term potential clinical benefits of the current proposal.