Anxiety Flashcards
How did ost and Westling (1995) gathered data for panic disorder during 3 phases?
- Independant assessor ratings: By qualified therapist
- Self-report scales: providing quantitative data
- Self-observation of panic attacks: keeping a diary of frequency and severity of attacks
Explain how the treatment of applied relaxation differed from the treatment of the CBT group in ost and westling?
- The AR group were taught progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) to be used in both panic and non-panic situations
- CBT group was only taught CBT
Explain how physiological effect of applied relaxation is different from the physiological effect of applied tension?
- AR: involves tensing and relaxing muscles slowly to relax muscles, decrease blood pressure and counteract the effects of stress-related hormones
- AT: involves tensing muscles rapidly to increase blood pressure
What is strength for behavioural techniques to treat anxiety disorders?
- techniques can be applied by anyone, in any place at any time
- They are more likely to be generalized because all people can learn and unlearn following the same principles
What is weakness for behavioural techniques to treat anxiety disorders?
- They take time and effort from the person (compared to taking medication)
- They ignore the role of biochemical
- Therapist is needed, which is more costly than taking a drug
What is systematic desensitisation?
- Gradual exposure therapy
- The patient is taught relaxation techniques and are gradually exposed to increasing levels of the objects they have phobia of until their phobic reaction subsidies
Describe the cognitive explanation of phobias
- A phobia may develop due to irrational thoughts
- The person believes that the phobic object as more dangerous or harmful than the object really is
- Due to this thoughts, when the person sees the object they will have a strong fear reaction
- These irrational thoughts could have developed from bad experience and the irrational belief that is likely to happen in the future
What are 2 strengths of cognitive explanation of phobias?
- With the evidence of DiNardo’s study, he found that dog phobia was more common in people who had a fearful experience with a dog and also believed that it will likely to happen in the future again. This evidence supports the explanation as it shows how people with phobia would have irrational thoughts compared to those people who had the bad experienc but did not believe it would happen again. This increases the validity of the cognitive explanation of phobias
- The explanation is more holistic than other approahes: as it takes into account both the experience of the phobic object as well as the person’s cognitions about the phobic object. The person thinks that there is a high likelihood that the bad experience hey had will happen again.
Suggest one generalisation that can be made from the study of little Albert
The explanation of learning: Classical conditioning
- Albert’s phobia of associating animals with loud noises could be the way in which many eople develop a fear of animals
What is the advantage of conducting research on phobias in a laboratory?
- A lab experiment has an IV, DV, and controls
- Lab experiments are reductionist so one variable can be isolated and studied
- people know that they are taking part (giving consent)
- IV can be studied precisely
What is the disadvantage of conducting research on phobias in a laboratory?
- Phobias usually apply to events in the real world and so studies should be conducted in the real world
- Might be reductionist to isolate variables to study when many other variables that are controlled in a laboratory might contribute to the phobia
Outline one biomedical/genetic explanation of a phobia
- The explanation is that we are prepared to fear certain situations that might pose a threat to survival such as dangerous animals.
- This has been passed on from one generation to the next via DNA
Describe one study about classical conditioning of a phobia (Little Albert)
- 9 months old baby showed no response to the unconditioned stimulus, a white rat, at the start of the study
- Watson and Raynor banged an iron bar behind little Albert when he touched the white rat and little Albert would cry
- Very soon, little Albert would cry when presented with the conditioned stimulus, a white rat, which shows he learned to be afraid of it through the process of operant conditioning.
Describe one strength of the study of little Albert
- Lab experiment: cotntrol, reliability, validity
- Longitudinal study
- Used qualitative data
Describe on weakness of the study of little Albert
- Generalisability: one pps
- Ethical issues: teaching a baby a phobia
- Low ecological validity