Chap 11 - Behavioral and CBFT Flashcards
Behavioral Family Therapy (BFT)
- Is a fairly recent treatment methodology that had its origins in research involving the modification of children’s actions by parents.
- Treatment procedures based on Social Learning Theory (Bandura & Walters)
- Stresses the importance of modeling new behaviors
- Initially structure had a linear nature (A caused B)
- Grew to embrace a more interactional style treating family behavioral problems
- A type of BFT that is systemic is Functional Family Therapy
Initial work was conducted at the Oregon Social Learning Center w/Gerald Patterson and John Reid in the mid-1960’s
BFT
Involved training parents and significant adults to be agents of change in their children’s lives
BFT
• a
BFT techniques include:
- Rewards (candy, eventually used points instead)
- Modeling
- Time-out
- Contingent attention
Cognitive-Behavioral Family Therapy (CBFT)
- Is fairly new; involves cognitive restructuring including behavioral change.
- CB Theorists irrational beliefs cause, or at least maintain maladaptive behaviors and disorders
- Cognitions which perpetuate maladaptive behavior may include:
• Irrational beliefs
• Arbitrary inference
• Dichotomous reasoning
• Overgeneralization - CBT was first applied to couples and families in the 1970s.
Major Theorists
John Watson, Mary Cover Jones, Ivan Pavlov…
BF Skinner
- brought Behavioral therapy to the a national spotlight
- First to use the term Behavior Therapy
• Argued convincingly that behavior problems can be dealt with directly, not just as symptoms of underlying conflict. - Originator and proponent of operant conditioning
• Text: Science and Human Behavior (1955) - Much of BFT and CBFT are built on Skinner’s work
Operant Conditioning
The belief that people learn through rewards and punishments to respond to their environments in certain ways
Gerald Patterson
credited as being the primary theorist who began the practice of applying behavioral theory to family problems in the 60s
o Work at the Oregon Social Learning Center led to the identification of a number of behavior problems and corrective interventions.
• Especially training parents to act as agents of change in their children’s environment
Gerald Patterson
Patterson and associates developed a family observational coding system to use…
in assessing dysfunctional behaviors through their observations of parents and children in labs and natural environments
Neil Jacobson
- his practice helped refine his theoretical contributions to behavioral marital therapy and domestic violence
- Found the accountability, empiricism, and methodologies of behaviorism very appealing
- Was on the leading edge of family therapy until his death in ‘99
Neil Jacobson discovered that male batterers
(Type I’s or Cobras) had lower (decelerated) heart rates during times of physical assault
- People previously believed that it was higher (accelerated)
Neil Jacobson found that acceptance, which is…
loving your partner as a complete person and not focusing on differences – may lead to the ability to overcome fights that continuously focus on the same topic
o Jacobson’s findings challenged M&FTists to be more innovative and effective
John Gottman
- known for his expertise on marital stability and divorce prediction
- He and his wife have turned their attention to couples who are expecting their first baby
If you feel like your partner respects you, is interested in you, and turns toward you, then…
you will have a positive sentiment override for the negatives that may be in your relationship.
Premise of BFT
- Based on Behavioral Therapy – especially classical and operant conditioning
• Behavior is learned; people – including families – act according to how they have been previously reinforced
• Behavior is maintained by its consequences and will continue unless more rewarding consequences result from new behavior - Maladaptive behaviors (and not underlying causes) should be the targets of change
• Ineffective behaviors can be extinguished and replaced with new sequences of behavior patterns - Not everyone in the family has to be treated for change to occur
- Focuses on identifiable, overt behavioral changes
• Not usually be considered a systemic but does share an emphasis on the importance of “family rules and patterned communication processes…” - Emphasizes the major techniques within a behavioral theory approach
• Stimulus
• Reinforcement
• Shaping
• modeling - Has more specific forms of treatment than any other form of family (with the exception of Strategic Family Therapy)
Premise of CBFT
- The relationship-related cognitions individuals hold, shape how they think, feel and behave in couple and family relationships
- Also emphasize cognitive aspects of treatment
• Attention focuses on what family members are thinking as well as how they are feeling and behaving - CBFT therapists believe it’s important to gain insight into how cognitions influence a problem
- Utilizes health-promoting, relationship-related cognitions that promote growth and negative - relationship-related cognitions that lead to distress and conflict
- Therapists must deal with irrational beliefs on the part of resistant family members
Four Most Prevelant Forms of Behavioral and CBFT
- Behavioral parent training and Parent therapies
- Functional family therapy
- Behavioral treatment of sexual dysfunctions
- Cognitive-behavioral family therapy
Behavioral parent training and Parent therapies
- The therapist serves as a social learning educator whose prime responsibility is to change parents’ responses to a child or children, both through thoughts and actions
- By effecting change in the parents, children’s behavior is altered
- This treatment has a linear structure
- Therapists must be precise and direct in following a set procedure
- This approach attempts to improve the reactions, self-esteem, perceived support, and well-being of parents as a goal itself
- In Parent Therapies, parents are considered clients in their own right; this approach attempts to improve the reactions, self-esteem, perceived support, and well-being of parents as a goal all its own
- In either approach, one of the initial and main tasks of the therapist is to define a specific problem behavior, monitor that behavior (A, B, C) and then trained in social learning theory; usually include verbal and performance methods; may involve role-playing, modeling, behavioral rehearsal, and prompting; performance is charted
- A psychoeducational parenting program is essentially Cognitive-Behavioral is particularly effective for at-risk parenting behavior; significant gains with low SES parents
- In parent therapies, parent variables are considered as important as child variables; the goal is to improve parental feelings; provides nonviolent resistance training
Functional family therapy
- Is family-based, empirically supported treatment for behavioral problems, especially with adolescents
- It is a multisystemic approach focusing on relevant systems at several levels (individual, family, and community) and all domains of client experience (biological, behavioral, affective, cognitive, cultural, and relational)
- It integrates different theoretical backgrounds from behavioral, systemic, cognitive, and intrapsychic therapies
- All behavior is adaptive and serves a function
- Behaviors represent an effort by the family to meet needs in personal and interpersonal relationships.
- Behaviors help family members achieve one of three interpersonal states
- Functional family therapy is a systemic, three stage process
In Functional Family Therapy, behaviors help family members achieve one of three interpersonal states, which are:
i. Contact/closeness (merging) – members are drawn together
ii. Distance/independence (separating) – members learn to step away from each other
iii. A combination of I and II (midpointing) – members fluctuate in their emotional reactions, individuals are both drawn in and repelled from each other
Functional family therapy systemic; three stage process:
PHASE I – Assessment: what is the function of the behavioral sequences? Do they promote closeness? Create distance? Or help the family achieve a task? The answer is found through direct questioning and observing
PHASE II – Change: help the family become more functional through:
1. Clarifying relationships 2. Interrelating thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of family members 3. Interpreting the functions of current family behavior 4. Relabeling behavior so as to alleviate blame 5. Discussing how the removal of a behavior will affect the family 6. Shifting the treatment from one individual to the entire family
PHASE III – Maintenance: focuses on educating the family and training them in skills that will be useful in dealing with future conflict; specific skills taught are those dealing with effective communication, team building, and behavioral management (eg contracting)
Behavioral treatment of sexual dysfunctions
- Sexual functioning is more than just having intercourse; it is physical and psychological – comprised of intimacy, relationship satisfaction, self-esteem, and family life
- Masters and Johnson pioneered the cognitive-behavior approach to working with couples in the late 60s and early 70s
- Masters and Johnson delineated four phases of sexual responsiveness:
- Discovered the importance of learning and behavioral techniques in the remediation of sexual dysfunctions• Their work from beginning to end is systemic
- Joseph LoPiccolo and associates have also reported behavioral sex therapy techniques success and that behavioral approaches had common elements:
- Behavioral-oriented therapy for sexual dysfunctions has been found to produce excellent outcomes