The enuresis alarm is a very successful method of treating nocturnal enuresis. Nevertheless many children drop-out of treatment and many relapse once dryness has been achieved. This paper examines the relationship between 30 variables, measured during the pre-treatment assessment of 75 enuretic children, and treatment outcome (success, failure, drop-out and relapse). Treatment was either by the enuresis alarm alone or the enuresis alarm preceded by four weeks of retention control training. Two features of diurnal bladder control (frequency and urgency) were related to failure in treatment and two factors reflecting parental intolerance to wetting (early toilet training and parental urging to use the toilet) were related to treatment drop-out.

There is empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of behavioural marital therapy. However the issues of predicting outcome and the responsiveness of particular marital problems to behavioural treatments, while crucial, have been largely ignored. Forty-five couples requesting therapy were consecutively assigned to either conjoint treatment, couples group treatment or treatment of one partner alone to ascertain whether a screening profile could be developed that would predict treatment outcome. In addition, the presenting target problems were analysed to investigate their responsiveness to treatment. The effects of the treatment were evaluated using measures of marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, presenting marital target problems and by an independent assessor. Using demographic and treatment variables as regressors, the analyses revealed that the coefficients were not on the whole statistically significant in predicting outcome. The trend analysis of target problems showed that conjoint treatment produced a more rapid rate of change compared to the other treatments. In addition, particular marital problems failed to respond to the treatment suggesting that the behavioural approach may require modification in the treatment of these problems.

Methods of evaluating training courses in behaviour modification for staff working in mental handicap are briefly reviewed. Insufficient attention seems to have been paid to changes in staff behaviour following training. A widely used training package—the E.D.Y. Course—was investigated using a non-equivalent control group design. Four special school teachers were given E.D.Y. training and compared with four control teachers pretraining, post-training and at a fourteen month follow-up. Results indicated that experimental teachers changed their behaviour following training in the expected direction and maintained this change at follow-up. Control group teachers showed no behavioural change from occasion to occasion and scored significantly lower than the experimental group on the dependent variable on each occasion. The results are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of the package and the maintenance and generalization of skills.

Two theories have been advanced to explain the paradoxical increase in fear and avoidance seen after short unreinforced exposures to phobic stimuli. Incubation theory (Eysenck, 1968) and sensitization theory (Watts, 1971) are similar with regard to the conditions specified for enhancement of such responses. However, an incubated response is seen as specific to the CS in question, whereas sensitized responsiveness is a more generalized process. Subjects were either exposed or not exposed to a feared stimulus (cockroaches), and were then administered generalization tests to the same stimulus or to a non-feared stimulus (toad). Measures of subjective anxiety, behavioural avoidance and physiological activity were taken. No evidence was found for the enhancement phenomenon to either phobic material or non-feared material. The phenomenon does not appear to be a reliable one.

Previous reports of the effectiveness of behavioural approaches in the treatment of blepharospasm prompted application of a modified behavioural package to two hemifacial spasm patients. The presentation and treatment details of these two cases are described with complete remission of symptoms in one patient and 50% reduction in severity for the second patient. Both hemifacial spasm and blepharospasm are traditionally unresponsive to medication and are treated by a variety of neurosurgical techniques, thus implying a strong organic etiology for the conditions. The cases presented here, and earlier cases presented elsewhere suggest that a learning model may be appropriate to explain etiology for an unknown number of patients who are surgically treated at present. This is discussed in the light of existing literature on the conditions along with methodological and theoretical issues.

Foa (1979) has identified two groups of obsessional patients for whom behaviour therapy is ineffective; those with severe concurrent depression and those with “overvalued ideation”. She has also highlighted the need for the development of new treatment strategies for these individuals. A case history illustrating the development of overvalued ideation in a previously typical obsessional patient is described, together with an account of a successful treatment based on Beck's cognitive therapy combined with exposure. The implications of this report for views on the development of overvalued ideation in obsessionals are discussed. It is argued that cognitive–behavioural interventions such as the one described here may be useful as an adjunct to more traditional behavioural treatments for obsessional disorders as well as in the treatment of patients with overvalued ideation.