Cognitive Therapy Flashcards
Cognitive schemas
Contain people’s perceptions of themselves and others and of their goals and expectations, memories, fantasies and previous learning
Describe the main point if cognitive therapy
Maintains that people respond to life events through a combination of cognitive, affective, motivational and behavioural responses. These responses are based in human evolution and individual learning history. Aims to adjust info processing and initiate positive change in all systems by acting through the cognitive system. Maladaptive conclusions are treated as testable hypotheses. In a collaborative process, patient and therapist examine patient’s beliefs
Describe the role of biases in cognitive therapy
A specific bias affects how a person incorporates new info. Depression = negative view of self, world, future. Anxiety = themes of danger. Paranoia = indiscriminate attributions of abuse. Mania = exaggerated interpretations of personal gain
Cognitive vulnerabilities
Specific attitudes or core beliefs that predispose people under the influence of certain life situations to interpret their experiences in a biased way. Eg. Person who had belief that any minor loss = major deprivation may react catastrophically to any smallest loss. Eg. A person who feels vulnerable to sudden death may over interpret body sensations of impending death and have a panic attack
Modes
Networks of cognitive, affective, motivational and behavioural schemas that compose personality and interpret ongoing situations. Eg. The anxiety mode. Some are primal and others are under conscious control like studying
Primal modes include primal thinking. Nevertheless, conscious intentions can…
Override primal thinking
Collaborative empiricism
Views the patient as a practical scientist who lives by interpreting stimuli but who had been temporarily thwarted by his or her own information gathering and integrating apparatus. The therapist asks questions to understand the patient’s point of view, not solely to change the patient’s mind. The patient, in then, plays an active role in describing how he or she would like things to be different and what he or she might do to help create change
Guided discovery
Directed toward discovering what threats run through the patient’s current misconceptions and beliefs and linking them to relevant experiences in the part. Tell the story of the development of the patient’s disorder. Implicit is the notion that the therapist doesn’t provide answers but is curious about what they will discover as they gather data, examine and ask the patient
Socratic dialogue
The way in which guided discovery and collaborative empiricism are implemented. A style of questioning that helps uncover the patient’s views and examines his or her adaptive and maladaptive features
4 steps of the Socratic dialogue
- Asking informational questions
- Listening
- Summarizing
- Asking synthesizing or analytical questions that apply discovered info to the patient’s original belief
CT attempts to improve reality testing through…
Continuous evaluation of personal conclusions
What is the immediate goal of CT
Reduce cognitive distortions and biased judgements, thereby shifting info processing to a more neutral condition so that events will be evaluated in a more balanced way
Name 3 major approaches used to treat dysfunctional modes. Which are accomplished simultaneously in therapy? Why?
- Deactivate them
- Modify their content and structure
- Construct more adaptive modes to neutralize them
The first and third accomplished simultaneously because a particular belief may be demonstrated to be dysfunctional and a new belief to be more accurate or adaptive
Describe the techniques used in CT
Directed primarily at correcting errors and biases in information processing and modifying the core beliefs that promote faulty conclusions.
Purely cognitive techniques focus on identifying and testing the patient’s beliefs, exploring their origins and basis, correcting them if they fail an empirical or logical test, and problem solving
Core beliefs are explored in a similar manner and are tested for their validity and adaptive was.
Also uses behavioural techniques like skills training, role playing, behavioural rehearsal and exposure therapy
Cognitive therapy vs psychoanalysis
Procedures like identifying common themes, emotional reactions, narratives and imagery. But in CT, the common thread is a meaning readily accessible to conscious interpretation, whereas in psychoanalysis the meaning is unconscious. And thoughts are not deeply buried in the unconscious and the self report is not a screen for more deeply concealed ideas in CT. CT is more structured and short term. Relies on info processing and application of logic and behavioural experiments, rather than free association and in depth interpretations
CT vs REBT
Share emphasis on the primary importance of cognition in psychological dysfunction. Both see task of therapy as changing maladaptive assumptions and the stance of the therapist as active and directive
But, REBT states that individual has irrational beliefs that contribute to irrational thoughts and this will clear up when they are disputed. In contrast, CT helps patient translate interpretations and beliefs into hypotheses which are then subjected to empirical testing. Thus, CT eschews the word irrational in favour of dysfunctional. Another profound difference is that CT maintains that each disorder has it’s own typical cognitive content or cognitive specificity. Has cognitive profiles. REBT on the other hand doesn’t conceptualize disorders as having cognitive themes but instead focuses on musts, shoulds and other imperatives that underlie all disorders
CT vs behaviour therapy
Within behaviour therapy are numerous approaches that vary in their emphasis on cognitive processes. At one end, an approach that ignores internal events. On the other end, cognitive mediating processes are given increasing attention.
CT and BT share some features. Empirical, present centred, problem oriented, require explicit identification of problems and situations in which they occur and consequences.
In contrast to radical BT, CT applies same kind of functional analysis to internal experiences. Also in contrast, sees individuals as active participants who judge and evaluate stimuli.
Studies on techniques like exposure methods show that treatments of CT and BT work together
Describe CT’s theory of personality
When a person perceived that a situation requires a response, a whole set of emotional, cognitive, motivational and behavioural schemas are activated. Previously, thought that cognitions determined emotions. Now, all aspects of functioning
According to CT, what is personality shaped by?
Interaction between innate disposition and environment. Personality attributes or interpersonal strategies developed in response to the environment
Beck, Epstein and Harrison found 2 major personality dimensions relevant to depression and possibly other disorders
- Social dependence (sociotropy)
2. Autonomy
CT posits that sociotropy and autonomy are styles of behaviour, not fixed personality structures. This stands in marked contrast with which theory
Psychoanalytic
Discuss CT and social learning theory
CT emphasizes a person’s learning history. Emphasis on learning history endorses social learning theory and importance of reinforcement. Emphasizes the idiographic nature of cognition because the same event may have very different meanings to 2 people. The way a person structures experience is based on consequences of past behaviour, expectations, and vicarious learning from significant others
CT’s theory of causality
Psychological distress is caused by many inmate, bio, developmental and enviro factors interacting with one another, so there’s no single cause of psychopathology. Eg. Hereditary susceptibility -> depression, diseases that cause neurochemical abnormalities -> cognitive vulnerabilities
