4B: Applications of Learning Principles & Self-Control Flashcards
Positive reinforcement
Initiation/maintenance of symptoms ▫ Food is enjoyable (especially following deprivation) ▫ Sociocultural context and comments Facilitate behaviour change • Rewards can sustain/increase motivation ▫ Encouragement and enjoyment ▫ Symptom remission ▫ Goal-setting for success
Negative reinforcement
Initiation/maintenance of symptoms • Avoidance of distress or discomfort ▫ Emotions ▫ Physical activity ▫ Appearance ▫ Situations • Facilitate behaviour change ▫ Exposure to address avoidance
Stimulus control
Through repeated pairings and classical conditioning processes eating behaviour can be cued
Break non-food (automatic) cues to eat and cue alternative behaviours
• Formalised eating
▫ Sit at the table
▫ Slow down
▫ Eating awareness (e.g. hunger/fullness)
• Planning
▫ Shopping list
Behavioural Intervention
Treatment targets: • Establishing eating routines • Addressing cognitions • Long-term health and lifestyle Common behavioural strategies (the ‘how’): • Self-monitoring • Regulareating • Stimulus control and alternative activities • Relapse prevention
Self-Monitoring & Routines
Self-monitoring of eating and physical activity
• Insight to guide and measure intervention
• Exposure to address avoidance
• Reinforces positive changes
Regular eating
• Normalise (condition) eating by setting routines
• Remove triggers (reinforcers) for overeating to
reduce behaviour
Remove cognitive control over eating
Alternative activities
Break the link between contextual cues and eating through alternative behaviours e.g. if bored then eat
Self-control
An issue involving conflicting outcomes.
Many behaviours have both positive and negative outcomes
Proposed that to manage this conflict you enact a controlling response to attempt to alter the frequency of a controlled response
Controlling responses: physical restraint
Manipulation of environment to prevent behaviour e.g. leaving money at home
Controlling responses: depriving and satiating
Influence whether an event can be a reinforcer e.g. grocery shopping on a satisfied
stomach
Controlling responses: doing something else
Alternatives e.g. chew gum
Controlling responses: self-reinforcement and self-punishment
Good in theory...but short-circuiting the system and having the reward is tempting and self-punishment is punishing in itself! Thought to work differently when applied to ourselves Social consequences (e.g. tell your friends and family) can be helpful in following through Individual differences can be important
Delayed gratification (theory of self-control)
Marshmallow experiment.
Strategies to avoid temptation included attentional:
• Look away
• Do something else
• Easier when reward not present or thought about in more abstract terms
Follow-up at ~17 years old showed that those with
strategies:
• Greater ability to cope with frustration
• Academically proficient
• Got along with peers
Ainslie-Rachlin model
Focused on preferences between smaller sooner and larger later rewards and shifts over time
The value of rewards is upwardly scalloped such that
reward value increases more rapidly as delays decrease and it becomes imminent
Small-but-cumulative effects model
Each single choice on self-control tasks have small but cumulative effects on probability of obtaining the desired long-term outcome
• SSR will always outweigh LLR!
• It is easy to undermine possible delayed negative
consequences on each individual occasion
Relapse prevention
