Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:17:58.480Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Some Normative Goals for Conversation Training

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2009

William R. Lindsay
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Monklands District General Hospital, Airdrie, Scotland

Extract

The conversation of three small groups of manual workers was observed in order to provide tangible goals for conversation training. A wide range of conversation styles emerged from the data, providing ranges of responding for various behaviours like percentages of short initiations, longer initiations, questions and length of latencies. Ranges of responding were also shown for the patterns of certain types of conversation involving initiations and reactions to these utterances. Despite the wide ranges of style in the conversation of the normal groups, their behaviour was in marked contrast to three small groups of socially inept psychiatric patients, in that, the patients were discrepant on every index of social behaviour. The study provides clear targets for conversation training programmes in terms of both the frequencies with which patients should engage in behaviour and the patterns of utterances with which patients might respond. To illustrate the way in which the data act as goals, patient groups are compared before and after treatment

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Argyle, M. (1969). Social interaction. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Argyle, M., Bryant, B. and Trower, P. (1974a). Social skills training and psychotherapy: a comparative study. Psychological Medicine 4, 435443.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Argyle, M., Trower, P. and Bryant, B. (1974b). Explorations in the treatment of personality disorders and neurosis by social skills training. British Journal of Medical Psychology 47, 6372.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Azrim, N. H. and Armstrong, P. M. (1973). The “mini-meal” – a method for teaching eating skills to the profoundly retarded. Mental Retardation, 11, 913.Google Scholar
Bellack, A. S. (1979). Behavioural assessment of social skills. In Research and Practice in Social Skills Training, Bellack, A. S. and Hersen, M. (Eds), New York and London: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellack, A. S., Hersen, M. and Turner, S. (1976). Generalisation effects of social skills training in chronic schizophrenics: an experimental analysis. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 14, 391398.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bartko, J. J. and Carpenter, W. T. (1976). On the methods and theory of reliability. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 163, 307317.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foy, D. W., Miller, P. M., Eisler, R. M. and O'Toole, D. H. (1976). Social skills training to teach alcoholics to refuse drinks effectively. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 37, 13401345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frosh, S. and Callias, M. (1980). Social skills training in an infant school setting. Behavioural Psychotherapy, 8, 6979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldsmith, J. B. and McFall, R. M. (1975). Development and evaluation of an interpersonal skills training programme for psychiatric in-patients. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 84, 5158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruenberg, E. M. (1967). The social breakdown syndrome–some origins. American Journal of Psychiatry, 123, 14811489.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hood, E. M. and Lindsay, W. R. (1982). Interview training with adolescents – a controlled study incorporating generalisation and social validation. Behaviour Research and Therapy (in press).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kazdin, A. E. (1977). Assessing the clinical or applied importance of behaviour change through social validation. Behaviour Modification, 1, 427451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewinsohn, P. (1971). Manual of instructions for the behaviour ratings used for the observation of interpersonal behaviour. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Libet, J. M. and Lewinsohn, P. (1973). The concept of social skill with special reference to the behaviour of depressed persons. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 40, 304311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindsay, W. R. (1980). The training and generalisation of conversation behaviours in psychiatric patients: a controlled study employing multiple measures across settings. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 8598.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lindsay, W. R. (1981). Reactivity to the presence of observers in a natural social setting. In Recent Advances in Clinical Psychology and General Medicine: Assessment and Treatment of Chronic Illness. Main, C. (Ed.), New York: Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Lindsay, W. R., Symons, R. S. and Sweet, T. (1979). A programme for teaching social skills to socially inept adolescents: description and evaluation. Journal of Adolescence, 2, 215228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindsay, W. R., Taylor, V. and McDonald, S. (1976). A programme to increase the frequency of conversation in longterm psychiatric patients.Presented to the annual conference of the British Psychological Society. Abstract in B.P.S. Bulletin 29, p. 206.Google Scholar
Marzillier, J., Lambert, C. and Kellet, J. A. (1976). A controlled evaluation of systematic desensitisation and social skills training for socially inadequate patients. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 14, 225238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minkin, N., Braukmann, C., Minkin, B., Timbers, G., Timbers, B., Fixsen, D., Phillips, E. and Wolf, M. (1976). The social validation and training of conversational skills. Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis, 9, 127139.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Murray, E. J. and Cohen, M. (1959). Mental illness, mileu therapy and social organisation in ward groups. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 4854.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McFall, R. and Twentyman, C. (1973). Four experiments on the relative contribution of rehearsal, modelling and coaching to assertion training. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 81, 199218.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Patterson, G. R. (1974). Interventions for boys with conduct problems: multiple settings, treatments and criteria. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 471481.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Patterson, G. R. and Cobb, J. A. (1971). Manual for coding family interactions. M.A.P.S. document, No. 01234.Google Scholar
Patterson, R. L., Tiegen, J., Liberman, R. P. and Austin, P. (1975). Increasing speech intensity of chronic patients (mumblers) by shaping techniques. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 160, 182187.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shepherd, G. (1977). Social skills training: the generalisation problem. Behaviour Therapy, 8, 10081009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shepherd, G. (1978). Social skills training: the generalisation problem – some further data. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 16, 287288.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spence, S. and Marzillier, J. (1979). Social skills training with adolescent male offenders I: short-term effects. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 17, 716.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stahl, J. R., Thomson, L., Leitenberg, H. and Hasazi, J. (1974). Establishment of praise as a conditioned reinforcer in socially unresponsive psychiatric patients. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83, 488496.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trower, P. (1980). Situational analysis of the components and process of behaviour of socially skilled and unskilled patients. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 48, 327339.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Houten, R. (1979). Social validation: the evolution of standards of competency for target behaviours. Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis, 12, 581591.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, H. H. and Hops, H. (1976). Use of normative peer data as a standard for evaluating classroom treatment effects. Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis, 9, 159168.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werner, J. S., Minkin, M., Minkin, B., Fixsen, D., Phillips, E. and Wolf, M. (1975). Intervention package: an analysis to prepare juvenile delinquents for encounters with police officers. Criminal Justice and Behaviour, 2, 5583.Google Scholar
Wolf, M. M. (1978). Social validity: the case for subjective measurement. Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis, 11, 203214.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.