17: Treatment of Psychological Disorders - Behaviour Therapies

Question 1

Behaviour Therapies

Answer 1

• they insist that:

1. behaviour disorders are learned in the same ways normal behaviours are
2. these maladaptive behaviours can be unlearned by application of principles derived from research on classical conditioning and operant conditioning

Question 2

Classical Conditioning Treatments

Answer 2

Two major ways of for use:

1. they have been used to reduce, or decondition, anxiety responses
2. they have been used in attempts to condition new anxiety responses to a particular class of stimuli, such as alcoholic beverages or inappropriate sexual objects.

Question 3

Classical Conditioning Treatments

Exposure: An Extinction Approach

Answer 3

Most direct way to reduce a phobia is through process of classical extinction of anxiety response

• Requires exposure to feared CS (conditioned stimulus) in absence of UCS (inconditioned stimulus) while using response prevention (prevention of escape or avoidance responses during exposure so that extinction can occur)
• Client may be exposed to real-life stimuli (flooding) or may be asked to imagine scenes involving the stimuli (implosion)

Question 4

Classical Conditioning Treatments

Systematic Desensitization: A Counterconditioning Approach

Answer 4

Systematic desensitization – attempt to eliminate anxiety using counterconditioning, in which a new response that is incompatible with anxiety is conditioned to the anxiety-arousing CS

• Client must construct a stimulus hierarchy (a series of anxiety-arousing stimuli that are ranked in terms of amount of anxiety they evoke)
• Client must relax, and then focus on first level of hierarchy, then next, until finished
  
  • Client can’t experience anxiety if relaxed strongly enough
  • Relaxation replaces anxiety as the CR (conditioned response)
• In vivo desensitization – exposure to a hierarchy of real life situations

Question 5

Classical Conditioning Treatments

Aversion Therapy

Answer 5

therapist pairs a stimulus that is attractive to a person (and that stimulates deviant or self-defeating behaviour – the CS) with a noxious UCS in an attempt to condition an aversion to the CS

• Ex: to treat alcoholics, injecting the client with a drug that causes nausea upon consumption of alcohol

Question 6

Frontiers

Virtual Reality as a Theraputic Technique

Answer 6

• Virtual Reality (VR) incoles the use of computer technoogy to create highly realistic “ virtual environments” that stimulate actual experience so vividly that they evoke many of the same reactions that a comparable real-world environment would create.
• it is used in the treatment of phobias and PTSD

Question 7

Operant Coditioning Treatments

Behaviour modification

Answer 7

treatment techniques that involve the application of operant conditioning procedures in an attempt to increase or decrease a specific behaviour

Question 8

Operant Conditioning Treatments

Positive Reinforcement

o Token economy

Answer 8

system for strengthening desired behaviours through the systematic application of positive reinforcement

• Tokens rewarded upon observing desired behaviours, and are then traded in for various privileges

Question 9

Operant Conditioning Treatments

Therapeutic Use of Punishment

Answer 9

Therapists only use punishment after asking two important questions:

1. Are there alternative, less painful approaches that might be effective?
2. Is the behaviour to be eliminated sufficiently injurious to the individual or society to justify the severity of the punishment?

Question 10

Modelling and Social Skills Training

Answer 10

Social skills training – clients learn new skills by observing and then imitating a model who performs a socially skillful behaviour