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Effects of hypnosis and relaxation
on equivalence classes involving terms associated with bulimia
in women. Previousexperience can interfere with the formation of simple stimulus equivalence classes, and this phenomenon may have implications for the assessment and treatment of clinical problems. In the first experiment, case histories of women involved in treatment for bulimia were examined to identify terms associated with their problems. These words were then used in equivalence training, and as predicted, equivalence class formation was disrupted: women involved in treatment for bulimia failed to form equivalence classes where these included terms associated with their psychopathology. A subsequent experiment with women involved in treatment for bulimia used a between-group multiple baseline procedure. For one group (n=5), participants completed a matching-to-sample experiment with three stimulus sets in which two of three A stimuli were terms associated with their psychopathology and the third was a neutral term, B stimuli were nonsense syllables and C stimuli were terms incompatible with bulimic behaviour. This was followed by deep relaxation/hypnosis focussed on self esteem. This sequence was repeated on six occasions. For the other group (n=5), procedures were the same except that on the first two occasions the matching-to-sample experiment was followed by conventional applied relaxation techniques. Results are discussed in relation to previous findings with exam-anxious participants. Keywords: stimulus equivalence, bulimia, relaxation, anxiety. |
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