Client laughter in psychodynamic psychotherapy: Not a laughing matter.

We studied 814 client laughter events nested within 330 sessions nested within 33 clients nested within 16 therapists at one community clinic in which doctoral student therapists provided psychodynamic psychotherapy to adult community clients. Each laughter event in Sessions 1 to 5 and 16 to 20 was rated for cheerfulness, politeness, reflectiveness, contemptuousness, and nervousness. Across all clients, there was an average of about one laughter even per session. The average laughter event lasted 3.5 seconds, and was characterized primarily by politeness and reflectiveness. Overall amount of client laughter and the characteristics of client laughter did not change across sessions. Most of the variance in the laughter characteristics was at the session level, with less variance attributable to clients and therapists. When client attachment avoidance was high, laughter was less cheerful and more contemptuous. When client attachment anxiety was high, laughter was more nervous. Sessions with more reflective laughter were evaluated more positively by clients, and therapists whose clients had more reflective laughter had more positive client session evaluations. Furthermore, within a therapist's caseload, clients with the most nervous and contemptuous laughter evaluated sessions most positively. Implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Process factors explaining psycho-social outcomes in adventure therapy.

The development and factor analysis of the Adventure Therapy Experience Scale (ATES) is the first attempt found in the literature to empirically and quantitatively identify therapeutic factors theorized to affect change in the adventure therapy experience (Russell & Gillis, 2017). This study utilizes the ATES to explore how its inherent factors may impact treatment outcome utilizing a routine outcome monitoring process to empirically test how these factors may contribute to treatment outcome over time. The sample of 168 males 21.5 years of age completed an average of 79.6 days in the 90-day adventure-based substance use disorder residential treatment program. In the model, adventure-based experiences are a primary treatment tool. For outcome monitoring, all clients were administered the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-45.2) at intake, every 2 weeks, and at discharge. In addition, clients were administered the 18-item ATES every 2 weeks. The ATES contains 2 items measuring how helpful the adventure experience was as well as how mindful they were of their treatment process during the experience. Clients also answer 16 Likert items measuring responses on 4 subscales: group adventure, nature, challenge, and reflection. Results reveal that clients, on average, improved in their psycho-social functioning as measured by the OQ 45.2. Weeks with higher helpfulness, mindfulness, and group adventure scores than the client's average helpfulness, mindfulness, and group adventure score, had greater decreases in OQ scores than weeks with lower helpfulness, mindfulness, and group adventure scores. Clients with higher aggregate helpfulness and group adventure scores, across all treatment weeks, had greater decreases in OQ scores than clients with lower aggregate helpfulness and group adventure scores. Implications for practice and future research are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Errors of commission and omission in novice group counseling trainees' knowledge structures of group counseling situations.

This study investigated how novice group counseling trainees' knowledge structures about group situations differed from experts.' Eight highly experienced group therapists and 54 novice trainees indicated which of the 19 leader interventions they would consider using to respond to the 21 group situations described in the Group Therapy Questionnaire (GTQ, Wile, Bron, & Pollack, 1970). Pathfinder Network Analysis (Schvaneveldt, 1990) was used to generate knowledge structures (cognitive maps) about group situations based on the aggregated response of experts and each trainee's response to GTQ. Comparing trainees' maps with the referent expert map, we found no common errors of commission, that is, relationship between situations in trainees' knowledge maps but not in experts' knowledge maps, but 10 common errors of omission, that is, relationships among group situations in experts' knowledge maps but not in trainees' knowledge maps. Cluster analysis identified 2 subgroups of trainees. Neither of these trainee subgroups incorporated the group's developmental stage into their map of group situations as experts did: experts saw the situations during the beginning and ending phases of the group as similar but different from situations in the middle phase of the group. The first group of trainees had a holistic approach to group situations but tended to make errors in dealing with group situations involving a problematic member. The second group had an atomistic approach to group situations but lacked a clearly differentiated and structured general organization for the situations. They tended to make errors in dealing with challenging situations where the group is avoidant and lacks engagement.