The present study examined the effect of training care workers how to use behavioral methods to assist elderly persons with disabilities in the transfer from their bed to a wheelchair. Participants were 2 care workers, a 20-year-old woman qualified as Associate Nurse, and a 22-year-old woman qualified as Care Worker. The person whom they assisted was a 78-year-old woman who had left hemiplegia and dementia following a cerebrovascular accident. The training had 2 components: (1) didactic instruction in behavioral methods, and (2) modeling and immediate and specific feedback on their performance applying a skill based on the instruction. The experimental design was a multiple baseline across the 2 participants. After both training components had been completed, the rate of appropriate assistance increased greatly, and the rate of manual contact decreased noticeably. These results suggest that consistent and accurate usage of skills by care workers in actual situations is needed when didactic instruction is followed by modeling and feedback.

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Child guidance centers in Japan confirmed that, in 2002, 23,274 children had been victims of child abuse and neglect. Reports of maltreatment of children multiplied ten-fold between 1991 and 2002. The prevention of child abuse should be a crucial theme for all Japanese mental health professionals. The present article describes a pilot project in Kobe, Japan, aimed at preventing child abuse. The parent-training program developed by Boys Town USA (Common Sense Parenting) was replicated by the Kobe Boys Town staff for parents who abused their children. The training model is based on coercion theory and social learning theory. The results indicated that participants completed the program and had a reduced risk for child abuse, thus providing supporting evidence for the effectiveness of parent training in Japan. Taking account of the Japanese social context, implications of the findings for parent training were discussed.

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Behavior therapy is generally accepted in social work as a highly valuable practice. The present article provides an overview of why behavior therapy was introduced into social work, and a consideration of its role in social work. A special focus of the discussion is on the relation between the social work terms of "life model," "empowerment," and "strength," and behavior therapy. A point of contact between behavior therapy and social work lies in the relation between people and their environment. Social work is based on a life model, and behavior therapy also attaches importance to relationships between people's behavior and their environment. Finally, consideration is given to the present condition, problems, and prospects of behavioral social work in Japan.

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The present study was aimed at decreasing undesirable verbal behavior emitted by an elderly woman with dementia, using a differential attention procedure. The participant in the study was a 91-year-old woman living alone in the community. Her undesirable verbal behavior concerned a nonexistent injury. A behavior modification approach was implemented for 8 months. Although her verbal behavior about the imaginary injury decreased for a while, the behavior recurred. That is, the effect of the behavior modification was not maintained. The conclusion was that it may be difficult to change the behavior of an elderly person with dementia using a behavior modification approach.

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In order to investigate the relation between cognitive error and anxiety in children, we developed a Children's Cognitive Error Scale (CCES), which measures cognitive errors in elementary school children in anxious situations, and then investigated the relation between scores on this Scale and trait anxiety. From answers by 217 elementary school children to open-ended questions about anxiety or worry, 12 anxiety situations were extracted. With the assistance of 5 clinical psychology graduate students, 23 primary items were selected for the Scale. Principal component analysis of data from 819 elementary school students (408 boys and 411 girls) resulted in the extraction of 20 items for the Scale. Reliability of the Scale, using the test-retest method and Cronbach's alpha coefficient were high enough (0.66 for the former, and 0.85 for the latter) . Content validity was checked through interviews with 2 elementary school teachers. In order to investigate gender and grade differences, ANOVAs were conducted on the Scale scores. The results indicated that the girls showed more cognitive errors than the boys, and that there were no grade differences. In order to investigate the relation between cognitive errors and trait anxiety, scores on the Scale were compared among 3 groups; results from ANOVAs indicated that children with high cognitive errors showed higher trait anxiety scores than children with moderate and low cognitive errors.

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The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of coping styles on the attentional bias for threatening stimuli. Undergraduate students (N =50) participated in a dot-probe task, in which a pair of words was presented on a computer screen for either 500 ms or 1500 ms; soon after the termination of the display of each word, a dot probe appeared where one of the words had been. Participants were asked to identify the dot's location by pressing a response button as quickly as possible. Some of the stimulus words were threatening words; others were neutral. Results of analyses of variance indicated that each coping style showed a different direction of attention for threatening words. However, the direction of attention for each coping style could not be identified. Although in the 500 ms condition, coping styles did not influence how attention was shifted in response to threat, in the 1500 ms condition, repressors tended to shift attention toward vigilance with respect to threatening stimuli. However, the direction of attention for sensitizers could not be identified.

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The present case study reports treatment with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) using exposure and response prevention (E/RP) for a young woman with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). This 17-year-old woman was treated successfully in 3 months for reductions in obsessions and compulsions, which mainly consisted of mysophobia and body dysmorphic disorder symptoms. The treatment focused on enhancing her motivation and maintenance to the treatment with psycho-education, and her self-control through successful experiences in homework. The effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy for body dysmorphic disorder was discussion. It was hypothesized that body dysmorphic disorder shares common biological and cognitive-behavioral features with obsessive-com-pulsive disorder.

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