The effectiveness of a motion sickness counselling programme

Unselected volunteers were offered a course of instruction in using the cognitive-behavioural approach to helping individuals tolerate the deleterious effects of different motion environments. In order to evaluate that programme, 11 of the participants volunteered to counsel independently individuals who were prone to motion sickness, using cognitive-behavioural training which included reinforcement by visually induced apparent motion. The subjects were pre- and post-tested by an independent observer using tolerance and motion response as the dependent variables. These test scores were compared to previous data obtained with subjects who had received counselling from an experienced counsellor, or had received no such counselling. The results indicated that the newly trained counsellors' subjects showed significant pre- to post-test tolerance to the motion stimulus, although they did not benefit as much as subjects trained by the experienced counsellor. However, in terms of post-test symptomatology and magnitude estimates of motion sickness, the trainees' subjects exhibited as much benefit as did those of the experienced counsellor. These data are taken as strong support for the feasibility of training counsellors to employ this method of alleviating motion sickness.