Éxito terapéutico e instrucciones: comparación del desempeño del terapeuta a través del análisis de la conducta verbal

Instructions are used in clinical practice to facilitate the acquisition of new behaviors and eliminate other problematic ones. Despite various studies on instructions in the experimental field, there is not as much research framed within the clinical realm. Therefore, the objective of this article is to explore therapeutic interaction in relation to instructions. Eleven cases of individual psychotherapy were recorded using an observational methodology and the Acoveo category system. The sample was divided into three groups (success, partial success, and failure) based on their percentage of protherapeutic verbalizations, and the significance and Yule’s Q statistic of three sequential analyses were compared. The relationships studied were: Instruction Follow-up and Positive Reinforcement; Non-Instruction Follow-up and Negative Reinforcement; Instruction Follow-up and Discriminative Stimulus; client and therapist categories, respectively. The results showed that in the second and last relationship in the success group, they were significant unlike the others. In conclusion, in all three groups, therapists reinforced follow-up expressions, but only in the success group were non-follow-up expressions punished, and follow-up affirmed by the client was evaluated significantly.