Multiple studies conducted by the Madrid research group involved various sample sizes – typically 7-19 cases per study with 9-11 therapists across different investigations. In total, more than 186 hours of dialogue were recorded and analyzed. All those cases were recorded both audio and video taped. The therapy sessions were analyzed interaction by interaction using the SISC-INTER-CVT system (Froján-Parga, Montaño-Fidalgo, & Calero-Elvira, 2006, 2010; Virués-Ortega, Montaño-Fidalgo, Froján-Parga, & Calero-Elvira, 2011).

They first developed the categories of behavior of each the therapists (Table 1) and clients (Table 2), then the relationships and frequencies of patterns of interactions (Table 3). The therapist behavior cattegories converged into 13 categories, the client’s to 15 cattegories. They validated the technology and methodology, which demonstrated high levels of inter- and intra-rater reliability, with Cohen’s Kappa coefficients consistently ranging from approximately .60 to .90 – considered “good” to “excellent”, to accurately classify the behaviors reaching up to 91% accuracy (Froján-Parga et al., 2008; Virués-Ortega et al., 2011; Ruiz-Sancho et al., 2013; Calero-Elvira et al., 2013). Then, once the behavior of each were functionally analyzed individually, a new software was linking the readings to understand the process of therapy: SISC-INTER-CVT (Froján-Parga et al., 2015; Alonso-Vega et al., 2022).

What they identified that is mostly useful for clinicians I will state with as much brevity as possible:

1. The Socratic dialogue in fact, even when framed as Guided Discovery, is a differential reinforcement pattern of the therapist that shapes the client’s verbalizations according to pre-established and agreed therapeutic objectives (Froján-Parga et al., 2013).
2. The Socratic dialogue happens in three phases: discriminative, debate and consolidation. It moves from initial questioning through information sharing to final reinforcement and goal-setting (Froján-Parga et al., 2010). The phases show how patient responses evolve from opposing therapeutic objectives (24.78% initially) to increasingly supporting them (64.58% by the end phase), demonstrating measurable progress toward cognitive restructuring goals (Pardo-Cebrián et al., 2020).
3. If the therapist precedes the Socratic questions with the preparatory strategy of explaining technically the reason of the process to reach therapy goals it is more likely that the client’s response is a verbalization that approximates to the therapy objective and less likely to produce intermediary and opposing verbalizations. This strategy was compared to the use of non-technical explanations, use of analogies, teaching reasoning skills, providing the target verbalization directly and questioning directly (Pardo-Cebrián et al., 2020). Table 4 summarizes and explains the findings.
4. Expert therapists were much more precise and timely in using aversive components after VIT and VOT, and NOT after VAT (Montaño-Fidalgo et al., 2022). They also are more contingent-oriented than rule followers of the method as the novice therapists, suggesting a therapist must become more responsive AND consistent in his reading of the contingency AND skillful in doing the correct action in each situation. This suggests the metacognitive ability must be keen to monitor the therapeutic encounter.
5. They discovered that in effective cases, discriminative stimuli (questions) successfully predicted target behaviors with R² = 0.446 (p = 0.01). In contrast, in ineffective cases, discriminative stimuli did not exhibit predictive capability with R² = 0.056 (p = 0.302) (Pereira et al., 2024). Few and better questions are the characteristic of effective cases. This gives an objective sucess criteria to orient deliberate practice of elaborating better Socratic questions. If a therapists train to improve the quality of his questions, he can track the initial standard frequency of success and see how his exercises are moving his baseline.
6. The effective therapists and effective cases were predominantly marked by significantly lower use of punitive stimuli from the therapists compared to ineffective cases (25% vs 81% contingent relations between problem behaviors and punishers) (Pereira et al., 2024).
7. The research emphasizes that fewer sequential relationships and higher systematicity characterize effective therapy, suggesting quality over quantity in therapeutic interactions – effective therapists use more targeted, systematic approaches rather than numerous scattered interventions (Pereira et al., 2024).