Campus Access Only


Date of Award


Document Type


Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)


Graduate Studies


The present study was designed to determine if Progressive Relaxation exercises would be effective in reducing the response time of a single Parkinsonian on a specific reaction time/movement time took. A 75 year old man served as the subject for this study. He performed a simple response time task at two scheduled sessions per week, for a total of ten weeks. Starting the sixth week, the subject began relaxation training at each session. Data points that represented the average of ten response scores from each session were plotted on a graph and examined by regression analysis. Regression lines representing data points projected to 100 sessions were calculated for both treatment and non-treatment halves. The response time for the one hundredth session, without treatment, was calculated to be .5744 second. The response time for the one hundredth treatment session was .1628 second. Regression analysis indicated that the progressive relaxation program reduced the response time of the subject.