Computer Based Assessment of Thoughts and Feelings

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) uses a rationale that the reporting of thoughts and feelings can be useful in Psychotherapy. My computer software program is an assessment procedure that explores the potential relationships of “Thoughts cause feelings” and “Feelings cause thoughts. It presents the subject with a more or less provocative picture and asks them to respond with their automatic or ‘gut’ feeling.

Each program session consists of the presentation of 60 randomly selected electronic pictures taken from the International Affective Picture System, a validated set of arousing pictures. For each picture the subject responds either “Thought”, “Feeling” or "Pass" by clicking the mouse to an on-screen button. Each picture stimulus and the corresponding subject’s response is recorded and the resulting session data is saved to a computer file. The session data files are then analyzed. Results and conclusions were reported in the presentation “Behavior Analytic Understanding of the Cognitive Therapy Rationale and the Role of Demand Characteristics in Psychotherapy” by Jennifer Leonard, Jordan Bonow, Andrew Busch and Jonathan Kanter, Ph.D.

Contact:

Daniel Shurilla
Electronic Research Technician
Email: dannys@shurilla.com

Jonathan Kanter, Ph.D
Assistant Professor and Clinic Coordinator
Department of Psychology
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Email: jkanter@uwm.edu