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Replication of Wells et al. Study Leads
To Valuable Clarification of Original Findings
Even the most carefully researched findings can be extended, and one of the
jobs of scientific research is to do just that.
Dr. A Harvey Baker, Director of the psychology laboratory at Queens College, New York, USA which leads world research on EFT, has planned a series of studies investigating EFT. These studies, when funded, can take us a giant step further in understanding just why EFT works and how. I will be reporting here on them as they come into being. Today I will summarize a just-completed study from Dr. Baker’s laboratory.
The study was conducted with co-author Linda Seigel and is entitled: “Can a 45 minute session of EFT lead to reduction of intense fear of rats, spiders and water bugs –– a replication and extension of the Wells et al. (2003) laboratory study.”
This study differs from the Wells et al. study in the following ways:
In the Wells study, only two conditions were studied –– one was standard EFT and the other a specially designed diaphragmatic breathing technique No control condition was used in the Wells study (i.e. there was not a group receiving no treatment at all) which is a limitation of the study previously noted by the authors.)
Baker and Seigel carefully inserted a no-treatment control condition in their study and also changed the comparison condition used. In the Wells study, Diaphragmatic Breathing (which turned out to be quite similar to EFT in its effects on small animal phobias, although not as effective as EFT) was used as the sole comparison. In the Baker-Seigel study, a Supportive Interview condition was used in which participants were given an opportunity to discuss their fears in a respectful, accepting setting, quite similar to Rogerian Nondirective Counseling.
When Baker and Seigel compared their 3 groups, the results were strongly supportive of the Wells study. As occurred in the latter, EFT participants improved significantly from pre- to posttest in their ability to walk closer to the feared animal after having received EFT, while the other two conditions showed no improvement in this respect.
With respect to the subjective measures used in this new study, EFT participants showed significant decreases on the two SUDS measures of fear (i.e. fear intensity on a 0 to 10 point scale), on the Fear Questionnaire and on a special new questionnaire devised for this study (the FOSAQ). The other two conditions, Supportive Interview and No Treatment Control condition, showed no decrease of fear whatsoever on these subjective measures. As in the Wells study, only heart rate showed large but equal changes for each condition.
A minor drawback of the Wells study was that participants rated their expectations of success for the intervention to be used for them before they had actually been assigned to a specific intervention. This detail was corrected in the new study, where participants were told which of the 3 conditions they would receive and after the condition had been described to them only then were they asked to rate the degree to which they thought this described condition would help to reduce their fear. The results? EFT and Supportive Interview did not differ significantly in their mean expectation scores (participants thought each might help them) but despite equal expectations they did differ markedly in outcome, with EFT distinctly superior in terms of results. The Interview and No Treatment control conditions did differ significantly in terms of expectation however ––participants didn’t expect that the no-treatment condition where they would sit and read for 45 minutes would help them much. Yet despite this, the Supportive Interview did no better in than the no-treatment control condition in terms of results. This shows that expectation of the participant cannot explain the superior results obtained by EFT.
Baker and Seigel also conducted a follow-up study after a 1.4 years lapse between the time of the original testing and the follow-up. On most measures, the significant effects for a single session of EFT still persisted after this considerable lapse of time and were superior to the results for the two comparison conditions. It is quite striking that only one session of EFT could still show effects almost one and half years later. This can be said of very few interventions in the field of psychology.
The Baker-Seigel study is complete and will soon be submitted for publication. If you have any serious research questions, Dr. Baker can be reached at: baker@forbin.qc.edu