M1: Chapter 2 Flashcards
What is a paradigm?
A set of basic assumptions that outlines the universe of scientific inquiry, specifying both the concepts regarded as legitimate and the methods to be used in collecting and interpreting data.
Provides general perspective that defines how to conceptualize and study a subject.
Developed by Thomas Kuhn.
What are the four types of paradigms in abnormal psychology?
- Biological
- Behavioural
- Psychoanalytic
- Humanistic
Define the Biological Paradigm.
A broad theoretical view that holds that mental disorders are caused by some aberrant somatic process or defect.
(a continuation of the somatogenic hypothesis!)
EXAMPLE: removal of ovarian cysts or the entire ovaries was thought to be treatment for melancholia, mania, and delusions.
Also referred to as the medical model or disease model.
What is the dominant paradigm from the late 1800s to the middle of the 1900s?
Biological Paradigm.
Based on the belief that in all medical illnesses, there is some biological process disrupted or not functioning normally.
What does behaviour genetics study?
Individual differences in behaviour that are attributable to differences in genetic makeup.
What are genes?
ultramicroscopic area of the chromosome and the smallest physical unit of the DNA molecule that carries a piece of hereditary information.
What is a genotype?
An individual’s unobservable, genetic constitution.
What is a phenotype?
The totality of observable characteristics of a person.
Phenotype changes over time!
(thought to be the product of the interaction between the genotype and the environment)
Example: Level of anxiety or intelligence
Various clinical syndromes are disorders of the ——–, not the ———.
phenotype
NOT the genotype
AT MOST, the genotypes for the disorders can be inherited and the environment is responsible for the disorder occuring or not!
What are the four basic methods to determine if psychopathology is inherited?
- Family Method
- Twin Method
- Adoptees Method
- Linkage Analysis
What is the Family Method in behaviour genetics?
A research strategy where the frequency of a trait or abnormal behaviour is determined in relatives with varying percentages of shared genetic background.
Idea is that if a mental disorder can be inherited, studying the family should reveal a relationship between # or shared genes and the prevelence of disorders.
What is the first step in the family method within behaviour genetics?
To collect index cases or probands
(people in the genetic investigation that bears the diagnosis or trait in which the investigator is interested!)
If genetic predisposition is present, index cases should…
have the disorde at a higher rate than found in the general population.
What does the Twin Method compare?
Concordance rates of monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins.
Studies begin with diagnoses cases and then search for the presence of the disorder in the other twin.
Concordance = the similarity in psychiatric diagnosis or in other traits within a pair of twins.
True or False: If the MZ concordance rate is higher than the DZ rate, the characteristic being studied is said to be heritable.
True!
This is because MZ twins (identical) have the same genes, meaning there is strong heritibility.
Why is data from the twin method hard to interpret?
Because concordence could be due to childhood environment or other factors.
Ex. The greater number of children with a panic disorder could reflect child-rearing practices of panic disorder parents (where a genetic predisposition is not actually involved).
What is the Equal Environment Assumption?
Assumes that environmental factors are partial causes of concordance and equally influential for MZ pairs and DZ pairs.
Saying that MZ and DZ pairs have equivalent numbers of stressful life experiences.
What is the Adoptees Method?
Children who were adopted and reared apart from their biological parents (eliminating the influence of being raised by disordered parents).
Ex. if children with a high frequency of panic disorder that were reared apart from biological parents with a panic disorder → can act as evidence for genetic predisposition of disorder!
Define Linkage Analysis.
A technique in genetic research where the occurrence of a disorder in a family is evaluated alongside a known genetic marker (used to study families where disorder is heavily concentrated).
*a method within molecular genetics (approach that tries to specificy the particular genes involved in a disorder)
What is an allele?
Any one of several DNA codings that occupy the same position or location on a chromosome.
What is genetic polymorphism?
Variability in genes that occurs among members of a species.
How does linkage analysis work?
Works by using another characteristic whose genetics are known (genetic marker).
If psychopathology among relatives aligns with the occurrence of the genetic marker → it is concluded that the gene predisposing people to psychopathology is on the SAME chromosome and in a SIMILAR LOCATION on that chromosome (“is linked”) as the gene controlling the genetic marker.
Researchers often use the area of linkage analysis to hypothesis gene-environment interactions, which are…
The idea that a disorder or related symptoms are the COMBINED product of a genetic vulnerability and specific environmental experiences/conditions.
What is temperament?
An individual difference variable that reflects variability in tendencies such as emotionality and activity level.
(like reactivity and self-regulation)
Partly beleived to result from biological inherited differences.
Shows that individual temperment differences is largely genetically predetermined and detectable at birth.
What are the three categories of temperament identified in the study of adolescent boys?
- Resilient type
- Overcontrolling type
- Undercontrolling type
Resilient children (of temperment) become resilient adults who are able to bounce back from _______.
adversity
The most adaptive of the three personality types found among children.
What is the Overcontrolling type (of temperment) linked with?
Shyness, loneliness, and moderate self-esteem.
Involves a sense of inhabition and anxiety which presents risk for life distress.
What characterizes the Undercontrolling type (of temperment)?
Often impulsive and lack self-control, prone to engaging in risky behaviours.
Linked with delinquency and externalizing problems, lower levels of IQ.
What are the four major parts of a neuron?
- Cell body
- Several dendrites
- One or more axons
- Terminal buttons on the end branches of the axon
What defines a nerve impulse?
A change in the electric potential of a neuron that spreads as a wave of depolarization
What is a synapse?
A small gap between two neurons where the nerve impulse passes from the axon of the first to the dendrites, cell body, or axon of the second.
What are neurotransmitters?
Chemical substances important in transferring a nerve impulse from one neuron to another
Inhibitory neurotransmitters act as mood stabilizers or balancers
Excitatory neurotransmitters stimulate the brain.
What is Reuptake?
process by which released neurotransmitters are pumped back into the presynaptic cell → making them available for enhancing transmission of nerve impulses.
What key neurotransmitters have been implicated in psychopathology?
- Serotonin (depression)
- Norepinephrine (involved in sympathetic nervous system - that prepares body for stress, produces high arousal, involved in anxiety)
- Dopamine (schizophrenia)
- GABA (inhibits nerve implulses, involved in anxiety disorders)
What happens when a neurotransmitter fits into a receptor site?
A message can be sent to the postsynaptic cell
What does GABA do in the nervous system?
Inhibits some nerve impulses and is involved in anxiety disorders
True or False: Theories linking neurotransmitters to psychopathology suggest disorders are caused by too much or too little of a transmitter.
True
Ex. anxiety disorder caused by too little GABA
*theories also suggest disorders are a result of disruptions in the usual transmitter process where transmitters are deactivated after being released into the synapse (like failure of reuptake)
What is the dopaminergic hypothesis related to ADHD?
States that ADHD is due to a GENETIC dopamine deficit
New research indicates that many adolescents with ADHD develop structural deficits in adulthoood
What are the three important features of ADHD in neuroscientific investigation?
- Abnormality in reward-related circuitry
- Deficits in temporal processing
- Deficits in working memory
What is ADHD-200?
A grassroots group of 200 neuroimaging investigators focused on understanding the neural basis of ADHD
What is deep brain stimulation?
A procedure that involves planting battery-operated electrodes in the brain to deliver low-level electrical impulses
More research needed with this procedure - still limited identification of the processes involved.
Neuroimaging studies are very important to psychiatric research. Can they impact the diagnosis of disorders?
They have NOT had a major impact in diagnosing disorders YET.
What is reductionism?
The belief that whatever is being studied can and should be reduced to its most basic elements
What is biological reductionism?
The idea that mental and emotional responses can best be understood by comprehending basic biological variables
Must be careful not to reduce disorders soley to genetic activity - one caution with this paradigm
Why is caution advised against reductionism in the biological paradigm?
Psychiatric disorders cannot be reduced solely to abnormalities in neuronal or molecular activity
Psychological problems need to be understood on multiple levels (including psychological factors)
What does the Cognitive-Behavioural Paradigm integrate?
Knowledge from medicine and behavioural science
It aims to understand health and prevent/treat psychophysiological disorders.
What is introspection in the context of the Behavioural Perspective?
Where trained subjects report on their conscious experiences.
It was the principal method of study in early twentieth-century psychology.
Who developed behaviorism?
John B. Watson
Behaviourism = an approach that focuses on observable behaviour rather than on conciousness
Define classical conditioning.
Basic form of learning where a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus to evoke a conditioned response
The unconditioned stimulus naturally elicits a response.
In Pavlov’s experiment, what was the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the conditioned stimulus (CS)?
Meat powder = UCS
Sound of the bell = CS
What happens during extinction in classical conditioning?
Elimination of a conditioned response by omitting the unconditioned stimulus
occurs to the CR when repeating CS gradually disapears.
What was the unconditioned response (UCR) in the Little Albert study?
Feeling scared (as a result of the noise when he reached for the rat).
Study suggests the potential association between classical conditioning and the development of certain emotional disorders.
What does operant conditioning focus on?
Acquisition or elimination of a response based on reward and punishment
Developed by B.F. Skinner based on the law of effect (learning principle that behaviour is aquired as a result of consequences).
Operant conditioning can produce abnormal behaviour - ex. a conduct disorder (very aggressive) can result from bad behaviour in childhood being rewarded
What is a descriptive stimulus?
An event that informs an organism that if a particular response is made, reinforcement will follow
Core aspect of operant conditoning
Skinner distinguished what 2 types of rienforcement that influenced behaviour?
(1) positive reinforcement → strengthening tendency to behave in a certain way by presenting a DESIRED reward.
(2) negative reinforcement → strengthening tendency to behave in a certain way by rewarding responses in that situation with the REMOVAL of an aversive (BAD) stimulus.
What does modelling refer to in learning?
Learning by observing and imitating the behaviour of others
Modelling may explain the aquisition of abnormal behaviour (ex. children develop similar phobias or substance-abuse problems through modeling).
Who developed the theories of social learning and cognitive self-regulation?
Albert Bandura
Greatly influenced the development of learning and cognitive paradigms.
List the four key processes in observational learning according to Bandura.
- Attention (noticing model’s behaviour)
- Retention (remembering the model’s behaviour)
- Reproduction (exhibiting the model’s behaviour)
- Motivation (repeated imitated behaviours if rewarded)
What is self-efficacy?
A person’s belief that they can achieve certain goals
Part of Bandura’s leaning theory, that we can determine the factors that influence our life.
Define behaviour therapy.
Application of classical and operant conditioning to clinical problems within a clinical context!
2 behavioural therapy approaches:
(1) Counterconditioning and Exposure
(2) Operant conditioning as an intervention
ALSO KNOWN AS BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION
What is counterconditioning?
Relearning achieved response by eliciting a new response in the presence of a particular stimulus.
A response (R1) to a given stimulus (S) can be eliminated by eliciting a new response (R2)
Ex. boy is afraid that rabbits can be treated by feeding him in the presence of a rabbit –> fear (R1) produced by the rabbit (S) was replaced by the stronger positive feelings evoked by eating (R2).
What is systematic desensitization?
part of behaviour therapy/modification
A procedure where a fearful person imagines progressively more fearsome situations WHILE RELAXED
Technique is useful for treating psychological problems where anxiety is the principal difficulty.
Developed by Joseph Wolpe
What is aversive conditioning?
A type of behavioural therapy/modification
Pairing an attractive stimulus with an unpleasant event (ex. a drug that produces nausea) to associate it with negative properties
Aversive techniques have been used to reduce smoking, drug use, and socially inappropriate desires (ex. pedophiles).
How does operant conditioning work as an intervention?
A type of behavioural modification/therapy
Works by making positive reinforcers for a desirable behaviour to increase its frequency.
Ex. a socially withdrawn child could be reinforced for playing with others.
Ex. a time out is an operant procedure where the consequences of misbehavior is removal from an environment with no positive reinforcers.
What does the cognitive paradigm focus on?
How people structure their experiences, how they make sense of them, and how they relate current experiences to past ones.
Define successive approximations in operant conditioning.
Responses that closer and closer resemble the desired response! (interventions are working)
Case Study Example = intervention to get women with schizophrenia to wear less excessive clothing by requiring her to weigh less (take off clothes) or she would have to miss the meal.
What is a schema?
A mental structure for organizing information about the world.
What is the main idea behind Beck’s Cognitive Therapy (CT)?
Developed by Aaron Beck
Depressed mood is caused by distortions in the way people perceive life experiences.
Ex. depressed people focus on negative happenings and ignore positive ones, making them depressed.
He feels depression is a model of negative cognitive bias (an automatic misproccessing of information)
How does Beck’s therapy aim to help clients?
By persuading clients to change their opinions of themselves and how they interpret life events.
Ex. point to counter examples when client says everything is negative
The goal of CT is to provide clients with experiences that will alter their negative schemas and dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes.
What is Rational-Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)?
Developed by Albert Ellis
A treatment that focuses on removing irrational dysfunctional thoughts and replacing them with rational thoughts.
Aim to eliminate self-defeating beleifs through a rational examination of them.
Ex. beleif that one must be perfect in everything they do - will make an error seem catastrophic - work to rationally eliminate this.
How is REBT clinically implimented?
Clinician presents theory so the client can understand and accept
Once patient feels their emotional problems will benefit from rational examination → clinician teaches them alternative irrational self-statements to ease emotional feelings.
Once the client verbalizes a more rational beleif - it should be made a part of everyday thinking (often with homework from the clinician)
What is the basic premise of cognitive-behavioural models?
The person is influenced more by their perception of events than the objective features of the events.
These models can demonstrate how the catcatastrophic cognitions are the root of the disorder → but how behavioural manifestations play a role in the form of escape and avoidance behaviours as panic arises.
Example of cognitive-behavioural model of a panic disorder
What do cognitive explanations of psychopathology focus on?
Current determinants of a disorder rather than the history of the person.
Within cogntive explinations - we know a depressed person has a negative schema, but we do NOT look towards where the negative schema came from (in a cognitive explination).
How does CBT differ from the learning (behavioural) perspective?
CBT looks at thoughts and attitudes, and overt behaviour at the same time.
The learning (behavioural) perspective looks simply at learning to improve behaviour.
True or False: Evidence shows that cognitive therapy and behavioural activation are MORE expensive alternatives to medication in treating depression.
False.
Shown to be less epensive
Fill in the blank: Beck’s therapy tries to replace negative thoughts with _______.
[more adaptive thoughts]
What are humanistic therapies?
Insight psychotherapies emphasizing subjective experiences, free will, and the ability to decide on a new life course.
Assumes that disordered behaviour results from a lack of insight and can be best treated by increasing a person’s awareness of motivations and needs.
Who is considered the most influential figure in psychotherapy?
Carl Rogers
A study reveals this
Define client-centred therapy.
(OR person-centred therapy)
Humanistic-existential insight therapy focusing on understanding the client’s subjective experiences and motivations.
What is the goal of client-centred therapy?
To reduce anxieties and foster actualization of the client’s potential.
What are the assumptions about human nature in client-centred therapy?
People can be understood from their own perceptions, are innately good, aware of their behavior, and self-directed.
Therapists should not attempt to manipulate events for the client, but create conditions for independent decision making.
What is self-actualization?
The fulfillment of one’s potential as an always growing human being.
(believed by client-centred therapists to be the master motive for change).
Aligns with the current movement towards positive psychology
What is ‘unconditional positive regard’ in therapy?
A crucial attitude where the therapist accepts the client for who they are, regardless of behavior.
Shows appreciation for the patient that they are just another human learning to grow and live.
What are the two types of empathy in Carl Rogers’ therapeutic approach?
Primary empathy (understanding, accepting, and communicating to the client what the client is feeling)
Advanced empathy
(interpretation what the client is thinking and feeling - therapist must generate a hypothesis about what the TRUE source of distress is hidden in the client).
What did Carl Rogers insist regarding therapy outcomes?
Therapy outcomes should be empirically evaluated.
He also introduced the use of tape recordings so therapist’s behaviour could be related to therapeurtic outcomes.
True or False: Adopting a specific paradigm can lead to overlooking other information.
True!
Why a lot of therapists use eclecticism
What is assertion training?
Behavior therapy procedures to help express thoughts, wishes, and feelings or resentment/approval.
What is eclecticism in psychotherapy?
The view that more insight can be gained by employing concepts and techniques from VARIOUS theoretical systems.
This view developed into a combined approach known as prescriptive eclectic therapy
(CBT is the most common but in combinations with others)
What are some environmental factors that influence mental health?
- Parenting Styles
- Parental marital discord
- Parental Mental Illness
- Peer status
- Peer victimization
List the three types of parenting styles.
- Authoritarian parenting
- Permissive parenting
- Authoritative parenting (most adaptive approach)
What is ‘affluenza’?
The negative effects of wealthy, neglectful parents on children, linked to increased suicide, anxiety, and depression.
What is cumulative risk?
The combined susceptibility due to multiple risk or vulnerability factors.
Ex. childhood adversities increase risk for mental illness (strongest predictor being maladaptive family functioning - parent mental illess, abuse, neglect).
What are two important elements of peer influences on psychopathology?
- Peer status
- Peer victimization (being repeatedly abused by peers - physically, emotionally, socially, like extreme bullying)
How does peer status affect mental health?
More popular (higher peer status) children are better adjusted; negative peer status can lead to loneliness and predict depression.
What organization works to improve education and intervention regarding bullying?
PREVNet (Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence Network)
The combination of exposure to domestic violence and child abuse is linked to more ——- and ———- problems.
internalizing; externalizing
The combination of both domestic violence and child abuse is linked to much more of these problems than when they occured in isolation.
What major themes are observed in children with parents who have mental illnesses?
- Good days and bad days
- Caregiving activities (care for parents and/or siblings)
- Bottled-up emotions
- Pervasive fear of violence
- School as a refuge
- Trying to save the situation (always trying to be helpful and avoid conflict)
- Lack of public interaction due to stigma
What is Cultural Diversity?
The differences that exist in an area or region due to the heterogeneity and varying backgrounds of the members of that region.
What specialty considers group characteristics in mental health?
Minority mental health.
Define Multicultural Counselling and Therapy.
Treatments with interventions that have been modified to address issues, beliefs, and dialogues that characterize people from various cultures.
What are higher levels of mental health problems in Indigenous communities attributed to?
Institutional discrimination, poverty, and economic marginalization.
What is the link between ‘spending time in the bush’ and mental health for Indigenous people?
It is linked to less distress and better mental health benefits by connecting with nature and engaging in Indigenous culture.
Introtuced by a Cree leader
True or False: The Cree suicide rate is higher than that of non-Indigenous Canadians.
False.
The Cree suicide rate is not any higher than the rate among non-indigenous Canadians
What socio-economic problems are prevalent in Nunavut?
High unemployment rate and a very low high school graduation rate. (compared to other Indigenous communities)
Nunavut has a suicide epedemic that is worse enough to be deemed a publi health emergency.
Pual Okalik resigned as Nunavut’s premeir because the gov still sold alcohol when there is not adequate treatment options for addiction.
What is the Healthy Immigrant Effect?
The phenomenon that immigrants have comparatively LOWER rates of health problems than Canadian-born members of the population.
This is partly due to a pre-screening process that limits entry of potential immigrants with health problems.
What factors undermine the health immigration effect?
- Poor language proficiency
- Limited friendliness of neighbors
- Problems accessing health care.
True or False: Do immigrants have lower rates of depression and alcohol dependence than Canadian-born people?
YES (can act as evidence for the health immigrant effect)
BUT children who imigrated at a young age are at a higher risk for mood disorders.
What is the Diathesis-Stress Paradigm?
A view that assumes individuals predisposed to a particular mental disorder will be particularly affected by STRESS and will then manifest abnormal behavior.
What does the term ‘Diathesis’ refer to?
A constitutional predisposition toward illness.
Can be from biological factors (ex. in schizophrenia), psychological (ex. chronic sense of hopelessness), early childhood experiences, genetically determined personality traits, or socio-cultural influences.
EXAMPLE: temperament-based personality types (diathesis) → become intertwined with different environmental experiences (that can impact stress) very early in life
What role does stress play in the Diathesis-Stress Paradigm?
It accounts for HOW a diathesis may be translated into an actual disorder.
Psychological stress can include major traumatic events (ex. Losing one’s job, divorce, etc.) and more mundane/life stressors (ex. stuck in traffic)
What is a key part of the Diathesis-Stress Paradigm?
BOTH diathesis and stress are necessary in the development of disorders.
Some people may inherit a biological predisposition that puts them at high risk for schizophrenia → but only given a certain amount of stress will they develop it.
But for those with LOW genetic risk, they are not likely to develop schizophrenia no matter how stressed.
What is Differential Susceptibility?
The tendency for the same factor to act as both a vulnerability factor under stress BUT ALSO as a protective factor under favorable conditions.
(ex. interpersonal sensitivity is a risk factor when being criticized and a resilience factor when being praised)
The Biopsychosocial paradigm suggests that all normal and abnormal behavior is caused by an interaction of ———- factors.
[biological, psychological, and social factors]
What are risk factors in the context of mental health?
A factor that increases the likelihood of a person developing a disorder or dysfunction.
Often triggered by environmental events or stressors.
Many risk factors develop in childhood & disorders often reflect a complex interplay of multiple risk factors.
What does resilience refer to in the context of mental health?
An individual’s level of protection from risk factors or ability to recover from emotional difficulties or trauma.
Resilience can reside inside the individual or reside in an environment, like a close relationship with a parent.
List some risk factors influencing the development of mental health problems.
- Individual factors (e.g., birth injury)
- Family/social factors (e.g., single parent)
- School context (e.g., bullying)
- Life events (e.g., sexual abuse)
- Community/Cultural factors (e.g., isolation).
What is a classic example of a gene-environment interaction that might explain why certain people show resilience to maletreatment, and others do not?
A study found that maltreated children with a genotype conferring high levels of MAO-A were less likely to display anti-social behavior as adults.
More research is needed however
What effect does living in impoverished neighborhoods have on mental health?
It increases depression through daily stress, greater vulnerability to negative events, and disrupted social ties.
