Cognitive Perspectives of Psychopathology Flashcards
what is cognition
“the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding thought, experience, and the senses.” - Gross
5 features of depression
emotional (sadness)
motivational (lack of)
behavioural (slowness in speech, no energy)
physical (headaches, no sleep)
cognitive (negative view of self, world)
diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder
presence of five of the following symptoms during the same 2-week period: at least one must be either (1) depressed mood; or (2) loss of interest or pleasure
triad of negative schemas
ineptness
self-blame
negative self-evaluation
cognitive biases
Negative Triad - self, future, the world.
Negative schema
Negative behaviour
Stroop Task (Gotlib & Cane, 1987)
Depressed individuals are slower at naming the colours of negative words
Evidence for Beck (3 tasks)
Dichotic listening procedure
Memory tasks
Interpretational bias
Rumination
habit of thinking a lot
Seligman (1974) - research with…
Dogs
- gave electric shocks
- trained to avoid shocks
attributional styles
global/specific
stable/unstable
internal/external
anxiety disorders 4
generalised anxiety disorder
social anxiety disorder
panic disorder
specific phobic disorders
Clark and Beck - catastrophic misinterpretations of somatic sensations
misinterpretations and sensations become a vicious cycle
what are Phobias
Specific type of anxiety…
Extreme, irrational fear of a specific object or situation
Avoidance plays a key role in maintaining the phobia
Avoidance is reinforcing
Cognition plays a role in explanation, or how/what the sufferer thinks or says about the object/situation
Hiding phobia can cause other detrimental effects
Phobia e.g. Agoraphobia
most common phobia (60% of all patients with phobias)
Commonly defined as fear of open spaces…
But primary fear = fear of leaving the security of the home
Secondary fear = fear of open spaces
Patients tend to be more aware of the secondary fear than the primary one, hence the definition, which also highlights the importance of how we think and explain what we are feeling…
PTSD
Anxiety disorder in response to extreme physical or psychological trauma outside of normal human experience
Shell shock in soldiers who fought in WWI
Then “combat fatigues” pre-1980
Then “post traumatic stress disorder” in DSM-III (1980)
aspects of PTSD
Intrusion symptoms
Memories, dreams, flashbacks, prolonged distress & physical reactions
Memory seems to be the key
Then response to the memory
Cause almost exclusively environmental
Classical conditioning
But not everyone will develop PTSD so other factors thought to be at work
Diagnosis can only occur in light of a specific traumatic event, but increasing evidence to show it may not be necessary (e.g. emotional upheavals such as divorce)
Cognitive aspects of PTSD
Dual representation theory (Brewin et al, 1996):
Symptoms result from a dissociation between memory and “snapshots” of the event
Two memory systems implicated
Verbally accessible memory system (VAM)
Situationally accessible memory system (SAM)
VAM thought to be impaired, therefore fear in the memory is the focus
Without the autobiographical memory the “snapshots” are likely to return as involuntary flashbacks
Dual representation outcomes
Completion / integration
Chronic emotional processing
Premature inhibition of processing
Theory of mind
ability to understand our own and others mental states
attentional processes
sustained attention
selective attention
divided attention
types of delusions
persecution
grandeur
reference
nihilistic
