Bob this is interesting. Can you clarify your cognitive therapy example just so
I understand?

Here it is: "Let’s say the cognitive therapist tells the client they have a
faulty assumption about being in an intimate relationship. And, they need to
test their (the client’s) hypothesis (a cognition) that taking risks in being
close and open will result in rejection. The client then agrees that they
apparently do have this hypothesis that accounts for their intimacy problems
(CRB3) and are willing to test it. Of course they can proceed in a more FAP
manner if the therapist were to then ask the client to test the hypothesis in
the here and now with the therapist- a way we would prefer. Could they have an
even better CRB3. Sure, they could relate their interpersonal relating problems
to their history of contingencies. How do we know if a CRB3 is in need of
improvement-- this would be functionally defined as to what effect it has on
CRB2’s and O2’s."

If I understand your example, I am saying that in your example, a client's
improved, more accurate statement, if it is in the context of the therapy
relationship (e.g, "I do believe that taking risks with you is worth it because
it will not lead to rejection and will make us closer") would be coded as CRB2
(if you are allowing for such cognitive variables to be seen as CRB, which is
another issue), not CRB3, which handles your question - how do we know if a CRB3
is in need of improvement? But I do not think that is what you are saying here.
If the improved statement is not a CRB2 in this example, what would be a CRB2
and how would this CRB3 be functionally defined with respect to its effect on
the CRB2? And if you are saying it is functionally related to the CRB2,
wouldn't it just be another CRB2?

Jonathan

Assistant Professor
Director, UWM Depression Treatment Specialty Clinic
Coordinator, UWM Psychology Clinic
Core Scientist, Center for Addictions and Behavioral Health Research
Department of Psychology
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Office: Garland Hall 238D
Phone: (414) 229-3834

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Kohlenberg" <fap@...>
To: "FAP" <functionalanalyticpsychotherapy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 4:53:14 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: [functionalanalyticpsychotherapy] Re: Doubts CRB3





Dear Jonathan and Claudia

 

Definitely an interesting question and issue.  

 

I can see the merit in defining causal talk as either a CRB1 or 2-- this
captures the notion that it is a behavior that needs to be functionally assessed
and thus shaped.   Causal statements can thus be broadly defined and includes
the range ABC or AC, or   BC or maybe even just B (this could even be an
improved CRB3 if they never mention their own behavior).   The problem is it is
a stretch to say the client’s daily life problem concerns the way in which
they describe their behavior and its causes.   To be sure their descriptions
may not be particularly useful in dealing with daily life problems, but the
relationship is indirect and perhaps tenuous.   Thus it is possible for someone
to improve how close and open they are (if this is their daily life problem) as
a result of shaping being open during the therapeutic interaction even--  
though they may have some cockamamie psychodynamic account about why they were
interpersonally avoidant.   On the other hand, it seems l reasonable to say
they might improve more and transfer improvements to the outside with more
appropriate causal talk.

 

Another example comes to mind.   Let’s say the cognitive therapist tells the
client they have a faulty assumption about being in an intimate relationship.
And, they need to test their (the client’s) hypothesis (a cognition) that
taking risks in being close and open will result in rejection.   The client
then agrees that they apparently do have this hypothesis that accounts for their
intimacy problems (CRB3) and are willing to test it.   Of course they can
proceed in a more FAP manner if the therapist were to then ask the client to
test the hypothesis in the here and now with the therapist- a way we would
prefer.   Could they have an even better CRB3.   . Sure, they could relate
their interpersonal relating problems to their history of contingencies.   How
do we know if a CRB3 is in need of improvement-- this would be functionally
defined as to what effect it has on CRB2’s and O2’s.  

 

Maybe what we should have done in our writings is to have defined the CRB3 to
correspond to CRB1 and to CRB4 (improved interpretation) to CRB2..  

 

So, I’m able to take this esoteric and questionable high ground and avoid
topography because I'm not dealing with coding problems.   I'm saying my stand
is questionable because we need to be able to code the phenomena that we say are
important.   Perhaps some kind of compromise?

 

  Bob

 
Robert J. Kohlenberg, Ph.D., ABPP
Professor
Department of Psychology 351629
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
 Voice- 206-543-9898
 Fax 206-685-1310
 
The above email may contain Patient Identifiable Information.
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----- Original Message -----
From: functionalanalyticpsychotherapy@yahoogroups.com
To: functionalanalyticpsychotherapy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 5:26 AM
Subject: [functionalanalyticpsychotherapy] Digest Number 297



Functional Analytic Psychotherapy
Messages In This Digest (1 Message)

1a. Re: Doubts CRB3 From: Jonathan W Kanter
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1a. Re: Doubts CRB3
Posted by: "Jonathan W Kanter" jkanter@...   jonathankanter
Fri Jan 23, 2009 1:37 pm (PST)

Hi Claudia,

Well I think you have asked some very good and complicated questions, and I have
tried to be brief in my response but largely failed at that.

When writing the book, there was some disagreement about CRB3s based exactly on
the points you are raising: CRB1s and CRB2s are defined as in session behavior
in the context of the therapy relationship but CRB3s can be about anything, so
there is some discrepency here. Why not define CRB3s as only client talk about
CRB1s or CRB2s?

The book ended up sticking with how CRB3s were described in the original 1991
text, which is a much broader definition that allows any functional talk to be
defined as CRB3. If you think about it, it is in fact consistent with CRB1s and
CRB2s because all CRB3 talk, regardless of its content, happens in session and
thus if you are trying to shape better functional talk, what matters is that the
talk happens in session and can be responded to by the therapist, and this
applies to talk about anything.

The reason for defining CRB3s this way was to emphasis that WHATEVER you are
talking about in FAP, it is always better to be talking about it in functional
terms, and even if you are not working on CRB1s and CRB2s you can still be
shaping CRB3s with respect to whatever the topic is.

So the answer to your first question (What´s the difference between the CRB3
and contingency analysis made by the client?) is: nothing.

This makes sense as a general FAP principle but it is not a good way to look at
it in terms of research or FAPRS coding, as your questions 2, 3, and 4 suggest.
Regarding your question 3, they way CRB3s are defined in the book, they are the
same thing as other functional interpretations made by the client about his/her
behavior. And yes, if you are doing FAPRS coding and coding CRB1s, 2s, and 3s,
this will result in many more CRB3s than the others for most FAP sessions.

We have been doing some FAPRS coding lately and have talked about some changes
to the codes to clear some of this up. Ultimately, however, for our purposes we
decided that we simply too complicated and just decided not to code them at all.
But, if we were to code them, here is what we came up with:

1. Have a separate code for CRB3s that are about CRB1s and CRB2s (e.g., about
the therapy relationship) and a separate code for CRB3s that are about outside
stuff. We were calling the therapy-focsed ones CRB3s and the outside ones 03s.
Then if you want to talk about the frequency of CRB3s as traditionally defined,
you can just combine these two, but you can also look at them separately if that
is of interest to you.

2. If shaping improved client "causal talk" was an important part of the therapy
process (your question 4), we defined that "causal talk" as CRB1 or CRB2,
depending on how successful it was, and not CRB3. In other words, while in
general improving the functional quality of causal talk is important to all FAP
sessions (thus the CRB3 code), for some clients this will become a focus of
therapy and be part of the specific case conceptualization for that client. For
these clients, when it occurs, we would code it as CRB1 or CRB2.

3. By the way, the reason we decided it was too complicated to code CRB3s was
this: We could not find a way to define them in such a way that they could be
identified reliably. We tried to specify them in terms of the traditional 3-term
operant contingency (i.e., A-B-C; antecedent-behavior-consequence) and we could
not agree on how many terms needed to be specified in a specific client
statement to "count" as a CRB3. In other words, if the client says, "I hit him
because he hit me," this specifies an A and a B but not a C. Is this functional?
Again, from a general FAP perspective you can call this a CRB3 and try to make
it better, but from a coding standpoint we felt that the statement NEEDED to
specify a past consequence or probable future consequence to count as a CRB3.
But it turns out these are very rare, so if you require the consequence for it
to be a CRB3 you almost never see them. We also discussed some subcodes to
specify which terms of the contingency were specified, so then we could lump
them all together if we wanted but also look at different types of CRB3. For
example, you could have a CRB3(A-B) or a CRB3 (B-C) or a CRB3 (A-B-C). Then we
decided that this was much too complicated for our purposes and would take much
too long to be able to code reliably and dropped the whole thing. For our
research, we really care about the CRB1s and CRB2s a lot more, and wanted to
devote our energies to getting those right. But I think Bill Follette's lab may
still be pursuing that possibility of CRB3 subcodes.

Sorry this is so long - hope it is helpful. We can share with you our latest
FAPRS manual; it is a bit different than the one published and on the web. All
depends on your purpose and what you hope to achieve with the coding.

Jonathan Kanter
Assistant Professor
Director, UWM Depression Treatment Specialty Clinic
Coordinator, UWM Psychology Clinic
Core Scientist, Center for Addictions and Behavioral Health Research
Department of Psychology
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Office: Garland Hall 238D
Phone: (414) 229-3834

----- Original Message -----
From: "Claudia Oshiro" < claudiaoshiro77@... >
To: functionalanalyticpsychotherapy@yahoogroups.com
Cc: "Sonia Beatriz" < sbmeyer@... >, "Rodrigo Nunes Xavier" <
rodrigonunesxavier@... >, "Giovana Del Prette" < gdprette@... >
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 4:15:35 AM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: [functionalanalyticpsychotherapy] Doubts CRB3

Hello all,
    I read the FAPRS and right now I´m reading the Fap´s new book and I 
have some questions about the CRB3. I hope you guys can help me on  this.
    First, in the definition of the CRB1 and CRB2 the behavior has
to happen in-session and in the context of the therapeutic  relationship.
However, in the definition of the CRB3, according to  FAPRS,  the
descriptions of controlling variables are CRB3s whether  the client describes
in-session variables, or those contingencies  outside the therapy
setting. Reading the Fap´s new book, chapter 1,  "when clients` talk about
their own behavior and the causes of it is  labeled CRB3 (...).While the best
CRB3s involve the observation and  description of one´s own behavior
and associated reinforcing,  discriminative and eliciting stimuli,
any `causal` talk may be seen  as CRB3 because it represents an opportunity
to shape something  important to FAP in the therapy session" (p. 14). I
thought the  behavior classified as CRB1, CRB2 or CRB3 would have to happen
only  in-session and in the context of the therapeutic relationship. I was 
wondering why the CRB3 is not included in this definition.
    1) What´s the difference between the CRB3 and contingency  analysis
made by the client?
    2) In an experimental research, when I add Fap, how can I  separate the
CRB3s from other functional interpretations? Are they  the same thing?
    3) Then, if they are the same thing, wouldn´t have I more CRB3 
comparing to the others (CRB1 and 2) and could this cause a  distortion of the
data?
    4) After a client´s "causal talk" that offers an opportunity to  the
therapist to shape a CRB3, wouldn´t it be just an attempt to shape a CRB3 and
not the CRB3?  
 
Thanks,

Claudia Oshiro
Terapeuta Analítico-Aomportamental
Av. Rouxinol, 1041 - Conj. 1701
Moema - São Paulo/SP
   (11) 9631-9500  
   (19) 3434-9597   (Piracicaba/SP)

 

Claudia Oshiro

Terapeuta analítico-comportamental

Av. Rouxinol, 1041 - Conj. 1701

Moema - São Paulo/SP

(11) 9631-9500