Cognitive Behaviour Modification

Abstract

The increasingly important role assigned to cognitive factors not only challanges the traditional tenets of behavior therapy but also augments and expands the highly specific procedures which have characterized the field in recent years. Self—instructional training, first used with hyperactive children to change maladaptive thinking processes, and stress inoculation training, used successfully with both clinical and highrisk non—clinical population to help them alter conceptualizations, employ coping skills, and successfully confront stressful situations, illustrate the possibilities of a broad-spectrum approach. The theoretical implications of increased interest in cognitive factors direct attention to the nature of the client—therapist interaction, mediation, the content of inner speech and the client's appraisal of outcome as active ingredients of the change process.