According to Bishop (71-78), both acceptance & commitment therapy and meta-cognitive approaches are aimed at enhancing better capacity to address the problem of mental stresses that affect the people in the society. Though they use varying models to understand the patients, the final results are similar in that they target the general well being of the community. However, of greater similarity is the demand for after treatment monitoring and evaluation by the two approaches.
It is clear that the ability of any medical treatment procedure is based on its capacity to address the problem in a sustainable format to ensure that especially the treated patient does not fall under the same problem while setting an effective approach to treat others. Clear calls for follow up and monitoring of the systems demands through an intrinsic close monitoring of the affected patients is effected to ensure that they are on the correct recovery paths is evident on both approaches.
Scholars agree that the depressing environment will always persist in the people especially with the modern emergent problems created by modernistic lifestyles and consumerism patterns. 4. Differences of the approaches • Theoretical framework According to Hayes and Kirk (78-79), acceptance and commitment cognitive approach is rooted on the Relations frame theory based on philosophical basements of functional contextualism which acts as a major facet in the radical behaviorism interpretation for predicting varying psychological events like behaviors, thoughts, and feeling among others.
Hayes and Kirk (80-81) continue to say that by understanding the exact context upon which an individual operates psychologically, it becomes easier to address the related problems through the manipulable values. In the review of BF Skinner theory of cognitive development, Naom Chomasky indicates that the development of language development must have an attached innate acquisition device to not only foster its establishment, but also enhance cumulative integration in the context of a child development.
Acceptance and commitment approach therefore seeks to establish a direct interlink between a specific operant and the general behavioral outcome as opposed to its generalization. It is the view of this theory that all the different mental problems when closely evaluated have strongly underlying factors that facilitate their existence. Unlike acceptance and commitment cognitive approach, meta-cognitive approach employs the theory of anxiety as proposed by wells and Mathew in 1994 and referred to as Self-regulatory Executive Function (SREF) model Hayes and Feldman (255-262).
This theory indicates that cognition in human beings occurs in several levels upon which operations and efficiency is dictated. At the lower level, the theory indicates that applications and occurrences are generally automatic in conceptualization and processing. Then the second level involves a well controlled processing that entails regulation, targets, and conscious appraisal of the human processes that link the brain orientation and the actual behavior explicit from an individual. However, at this level, storage of the different commands and the ability to recall the targets and regulations as Lynch (33-45) points out may be limited.
The third level occurs at the highest level of human understanding where individual understanding mainly indicated by self knowledge as well as self regulatory mechanisms are coordinated and harmonized. As the theory of anxiety therefore, meta-cognitive approach is a middle level consideration where that is strongly affected by the lower functionalities and the upper long term memory. Besides, it incorporates the general cognitive formation where errors and discreet thoughts are explicit (Simons and Herpertz, 257-264).