Stimulus control, a behavioral technique designed to reduce sleep difficulties, has been demonstrated to be effective when compared with control procedures. These comparisons, mainly involving between-subjects analyses, have neglected the contribution of the stimulus control procedure to the production of clinically significant amelioration of sleep dysfunction. In contrast, the present within-subjects experiment was conducted to assess the capability of stimulus control to produce clinically relevant reductions in multiple measures of sleep disturbance. A comparison with the credible placebo procedure indicated that the stimulus control techniques reduced subjects' sleep onset latency to a mean latency below 30 min per week. Additionally, sedative-hypnotic usage was greatly reduced. © 1979.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/l_ascher/10/
This article was published in Behaviour research and therapy, Volume 17, Issue 2, Pages 107-112.
The published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967(79)90018-4.