Cognitive behavior therapy with children: Has clinical utility been demonstrated?

Abstract

Considerable attention has recently been focused on intervention techniques designed to alter cognitive processes in an attempt to modify clinically relevant child behaviors. Studies in which children have been taught cognitive mediating strategies (methods collectively known as cognitive behavior therapy) were evaluated in terms of subject populations, adequacy of outcome measures, experimental and statistical methodology, and consistency of findings. In general, deficiencies were found on all dimensions. Although some studies have reported promising results that merit further investigation, methodological improvements are necessary before the clinical utility of cognitive behavior therapy with children can be documented.

Randomised Clinical Trial of Brief Behaviourally-oriented Interventions for Pre-delinquents

“…The current research however, appears to support previous studies which fail to indicate global improvements in maintenance and generalisation as a result of cognitive behaviour therapy (36).…”

“…Statistics are shown in Table 9. The methodology employed in the present study is an improvement on that used in previous research, which has been characterized by lack of control groups and follow-up testing and the use of non-clinical samples (36,37). In addition the examined intervention aimed at improving children's overall sense of competence, differing from previous interventions which targetted explicit and isolated skills (53).…”

The Integrity of Independent Variables in Behavior Analysis

“…(Nelson & Cone, 1979) and Differential Reinforcement of Other Behavior procedures (DRO; Homer & Peterson, 1980) complained that the independent variables are not described in sufficient detail for evaluation of the results. These and other reviews (e.g., Hobbs, Moguin, Tyroler, & Lahey, 1980) have implicated the lack of independent variable description and verification as a likely cause for poor replication of results.…”

Self‐instructional Training With Preschoolers: An Attempt to Replicate

“…One study frequendy cited or reprinted (see Abikoff, 1979;Brundage-Aguar, Forehand, & Ciminero, 1977;Hobbs, Moguin, Tyroler, & Lahey, 1980;Kendall & Finch, 1979;Meichenbaum & Asarnow, 1979;O'Leary & O'Leary, 1977;Ross, 1981) because of its success in obtaining positive generalization to classroom behavior as a result of training on psychoeducational tasks is that by Bornstein and Quevillon (1976). These authors demonstrated that the on-task behavior of three overactive preschoolers increased from a baseline level of under 20% to above 75% as a result of self-instructional training.…”