Abstract
The purpose of this study is concerned with the relative efficacy of two factors on the elimination of phobic responses, that is, the one participant modeling and the other verbalization by observers. It was hypothesized that both procedures are equally effective to the elimination of phobic responses. But it was expected that each procedure might have different effects, i.e. participant modeling may be more effective on the behavioral changes and verbalization more effective on the cognitive changes. A 2x2x3 factorial design was introduced to the experimental condition. The first factor was the participant modeling or the passive modeling. The second one was whether Ss verbalize the modeling stimuli or not, and the third one was the experimental phases, pre-test, post-test, and follow-up test. A total of 32 female undergraduates, who exhibited severe rat phobic responses, participated in the experiment as subjects. And all Ss were required to go through a behavioral avoidance test (BAT) and to answer a subjective rating scale of rat phobic situations (FI) and a FSS as measures. Following the pre-treat ment measures each S was received five treatment modeling sessions, where the model exhibited the coping behavior with a rat about twenty minutes per one sessson. The mean scores and SDs of BAT andFI are presented in Table 1 and the mean scores of five items about small animals of FSS are presented in Fig.3. The differences between pre- and post-treatment measures were examined within each group by matched t-test and the results revealed that the treatment procedures were all effective to eliminate the phobic responses. The mean scores of BAT and FI at post-treatment and follow-up phase were analysed in a 2x2 analysis of variance with participant modeling and verbalization as factors. The results revealed that the active participation of Ss to the modeling situation was an effective procedure to eliminate rat phobic behavioral responses and the verbalization by Ss was effective to provoke the covert modification of phobic responses. It was suggested that the procedure with participant modeling and verbalization is the powerful behavior modification technique to eliminate the phobic disorders in real life clinical settings.
