Behavioural approaches approaches Flashcards
summerise behaviourism
Arose in the early 20th century, partly as a reaction to the scientific deficiencies of psychoanalysis.
Advocated the study of objectively observable behaviour and the external events that maintain it.
Central Theme: Learning – the modification of behaviour in light of experience.
How do environmental conditions affect the acquisition, modification & elimination of response patterns?
The study of subjective experience not scientifically acceptable as not intersubjectively verifiable.
No need to explore or change the psyche or inner world.
what is radical behaviourism?
Radical behaviourists didn’t just shun mental states at a methodological level, but – at the extreme – denied the existence of such states.
where do behaviourists think maladaptive behaviour stems from?
1) failure to learn adaptive responses; 2) the learning of maladaptive responses.
what does behaviour therapy entail
Behavioural therapy involves unlearning undesirable behaviours and emotional responses and learning desirable ones.
Assumption: abnormal behaviours are learned the same ways as normal behaviours, and can be unlearned.
Behaviour Therapy
Directive, symptom-focussed.
Goal: behaviour change, not insight or catharsis.
outline classical conditioning
The process whereby a formerly neutral stimulus (CS) comes to elicit a biologically adaptive response by virtue of being paired with an UCS.
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) Russian physiologist who investigated the ways in which eating excited salivary, gastric, and pancreatic secretions. Noticed “psychic secretions”: drool produced by anything other than direct exposure to food.
Only CSs that reliably predict the occurrence of the UCS can become conditioned.
The CR gradually extinguishes if the CS is repeatedly paired without the UCS.
Many physiological and emotional responses can be conditioned, e.g., those related to fear, anxiety or sexual arousal and those stimulated by drugs.
are fetishes due to displacement or conditioning?
Freud – fetishistic object as symbolic substitute for the mother’s missing penis.
Conditioning – sexual deviations the result of an accidental pairing of an abnormal stimulus with sexual arousal or ejaculation (e.g., Jaspers, 1963).
outline little hans study
ittle Hans - developed a horse phobia after seeing a horse fall to the ground and writhe around violently.
Freud (1909): Phobias result when unconscious anxiety is displaced onto a neutral or symbolic object.
Hans’Oedipal fears of his father became unbearable and were displaced onto horses.
what is the little albert study
“Little Albert” - fear of rats induced through association of loud noises with a white rat (Watson & Rayner, 1920).
This fear generalised to other furry animals, balls of cotton and a Santa Claus mask.
Albert was discharged from hospital with his phobia intact
what is exposure therapy
Patient is confronted with fear-producing stimulus in a therapeutic manner.
Patient is confronted with fear-producing stimulus in a therapeutic manner.
Nyctophobia
Nightmare (UCS) + dark = fear à dark (CS) = fear
Maintained by avoiding the dark Treatment = Extinction (repeated exposure to CS without UCS)
what is flooding?
Full strength confrontation.
Habituation principle – physical exhaustion eventually results in a diminution of fear response.
Repeated flooding usually necessary to fully extinguish some fear responses.
Risk of dropout.
what is the little Peter study
Mary Cover Jones (the ‘mother of behaviour therapy’) and ‘Little Peter’.
Successfully eliminated a threeyear-old boy’s fear of rabbits.
‘Direct conditioning’ – paired the rabbit with his favourite food, and the rabbit was brought gradually closer.
what is systematic desensitization
Systematic Desensitisation (Wolpe, 1958)
Client taught to enter a state of relaxation.
Patient and therapist collaborate in constructing an anxiety hierarchy of imagined scenes.
Therapy sessions: the patient repeatedly imagines the scenes in the hierarchy under conditions of deep relaxation.
How does the systematic desensatization procedures work?
a) extinguish the fear response to the stimulus; and
b) establish a relaxation response to the previously feared stimulus (counter-conditioning).
Outline In Vivo vsImaginal vs Virtual Reality
Wolpe’s original SD procedure involved imaginal exposure.
Although in vivo exposure is preferred wherever practicable (not everyone has the same vivid imagination), imaginal procedures remain vital.
Virtual reality an important development. Allows an immersive experience, and the development of closely controlled and constructed hierarchies.
How did Aversion therapy work?
Use of punishment to modify undesirable behaviours.
E.g., drugs to induce nausea and vomiting upon the ingestion of alcohol.
Placing unpleasant-tasting substances on the fingernails to discourage nail-chewing.
Self-punishment with elastic band when temptation arises.
Interest in this approach has declined as other treatment options have become available.
DSM-I and DSM-II: Homosexuality a form of mental disorder.
Conversion Therapy
