| dc.description.abstract | Biofeedback is the use of instrumentation to provide feedback to a
client about his/her psychophysiological processes. One type of
biofeedback is Electromyographic (EMG) which measures muscular
contraction and relaxation. This thesis examines the use of EMG
feedback as a therapeutic tool in teaching relaxation to seven mentally
retarded individuals from a specialized treatment area for aggressive
and self-injurious clients in a provincially-operated institution.
Experiment 1 examined the feasibility of EMG biofeedback
relaxation training with a 21 year old profoundly retarded male and a
27 year old severely retarded female. An Auto Clinic 2001 (Colbourn
Instruments) biofeedback apparatus was used to monitor EMG activity.
Subjects participated in 10 training sessions for each of the following
three conditions: (a) contingent biofeedback (music) relaxation
training; (b) control on (continuous music); and (c) control off (no
music). The results demonstrated more consistent reductions of EMG
activity across contingent conditions for both subjects. Contingent
biofeedback training also resulted in significantly lower measures for
one subject in comparison to one control condition, and two control
conditions for the other subject.
Experiment 2 examined the possibility of generalizing the effects
of biofeedback training across settings and compared the effects of a
proportional-analog stimulus and discrete stimulus. The three subjects
were a 21 year old mildly retarded male, a 31 year old severely retarded male and a 15 year old mildly retarded male. The same
equipment was used, with modifications that allowed the production of a
proportional-analog stimulus. All subjects were exposed to 25 sessions
consisting of the following four conditions: discrete, variable,
baseline and control. Music was presented to the clients in the
discrete and variable conditions. The results from the final sessions
demonstrated that the discrete condition induced more relaxation in all
subjects than the three other conditions. An analysis of the pre- and
post-training rating scales indicated that 100% of the improvement in
the subjects behaviour occurred in the non-control treatment
conditions.
Experiment 3 investigated the possible advantage of massed
practice EMG biofeedback training with a 26 year old mildly retarded
male and a 42 year old moderately retarded male. Subjects were exposed
to the same conditions as in Experiment 2 for a total of 26 sessions.
Analyses of the one subject's data suggested that both feedback
(treatment) conditions induced more relaxation than the baseline
condition, but not significantly more than the control condition.
Analyses of the other subject's data suggested that the subject only
relaxed during the control condition.
In summary, the results of these experiments demonstrated that EMG
biofeedback is feasible with mentally retarded clients, and that a
descrete condition was the best relaxation technique (Experiment 2). It
was also shown that generalization of biofeedback training across
settings was not detected, and that massed practice may be more conducive to learning to relax, as opposed to randomizing and
inter-mixing several conditions. Several suggestions for future
research were also discussed. | |
