Clinical Observations on Conducting Self-Instructional Training

Abstract

Since my initial study with Goodman in 1971, self-instructional training has undergone substantial refinement. This chapter brings together the various observations from our laboratory and from others’ concerning the process of conducting self-instructional training. The chapter deals primarily with children because most of the work with the procedure has been with children. However, these same observations apply to self-instructional training with adults. The treatment suggestions offered are not based upon careful empirical studies but rather represent a sort of cumulative “wisdom” culled from our own experiences and from the literature. I hope attention to the sorts of details presented in this chapter will enable us to avoid the “negative” results with which the last chapter concluded.

The one thing psychologists can count on is that their subjects will talk, if only to themselves; and not infrequently whether relevant or irrelevant, the things people say to themselves determine the rest of the things they do.

—I. E. Farber (1963)