Behavioural Approach To Treating Phobias - A01 Flashcards
Both behavioural treatments are based on which principle?
Counter-conditioning, which is a new response to the phobic stimulus learned by pairing with relaxation opposed to anxiety.
Systematic desensitisation (SD)
Instead of anxiety, patients learn to respond to a feared stimulus with relaxation.
What is meant by reciprocal inhibition?
The key idea is that relaxation and fear can’t co-exist, this is called reciprocal inhibition.
Explain the 3 steps of SD
- The anxiety hierarchy.
- Relaxation.
- Gradual exposure.
Anxiety hierarchy
The therapist and client design a hierarchy or list of stressful / frightening objects or events in systematic desensitisation.
Relaxation
Then the client is taught deep muscle relaxation.
It’s impossible to feel relaxation and fear at the same time – reciprocal inhibition.
It involves meditation, mental imagery or breathing exercises as well as drugs (like Valium) or hypnosis.
Gradual exposure
The therapist helps the client to work their way up in the hierarchy at the same time as maintaining the deep relaxation.
(At every stage, the client can return to an earlier stage to regain their relaxed state if they feel upset).
Systematic Desensitisation stages:
Stage 1 – SD is based on counter-conditioning procedure. The fear is replaced with relaxation.
Stage 2 – SD increases exposure gradually to the feared stimulus so it becomes more familiar.
Stage 3 – Exposed through an anxiety hierarchy – least to most fearful.
Stage 4 – the client learns relaxation techniques to practice at each of the hierarchy’s stages.
Stage 5 – relaxation and fear can’t coexist – reciprocal inhibition. The client achieves relaxation at the last stage of the hierarchy and then the phobia is extinguished.
How does flooding differ from SD in terms of exposure?
It exposes phobic patients to their fear without a a gradual build-up in an anxiety hierarchy.
What does flooding stop a patient doing?
Flooding involves the immediate exposure to a frightening situation in order to prevent avoidance.
How many sessions are needed for flooding?
They’re usually longer than systematic desensitisation, one lesson typically lasts for 2-3 hours.
Sometimes only one long session is needed to cure the patient’s phobia.
How does flooding work?
- Phobic responses are stopped very quickly through flooding. This is because it prevents avoidance behaviour, therefore the patient will learn quickly that the phobic stimulus is harmless. This process is called extinction in classical conditioning term.
- A learned response is extinguished when the conditioned stimulus (like a dog) is encountered without the leant response of fear (CR) as the UCS association has been broken.
- The conditioned stimulus can no longer produce the conditioned response (fear).
- The patient in some cases may achieve relaxation as they become exhausted by their fear response due to the immediate exposure.
Reductionism
The behavioural explanation might be overly simplistic in reducing complex behaviour down to a stimulus-response association. It ignores cognition’s role, that phobias may be due to irrational thinking.
It can be positive, but it can be difficult to simplify large theories in psychology.
Determinism
The behavioural explanation ignores free will’s role in the formation of phobias, implying environmental determinism.
If someone is bitten by a dog, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the person will develop a fear of dogs.
Therefore, other processes must be at play.
The idea that behaviour isn’t free will.
Nomothetic vs Idiopathic
The behavioural approach evokes a nomothetic approach, implying universal laws.
But if individual cognition is present, a more idiographic approach may be preferred.
