task 3

Question 1

Albert Ellis: rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT)

Answer 1

Emotional disfunction is the consequence of irrational beliefs that are unempirical or unrealistic and/or contain a “should” or “must” that is unhelpful for an individual to achieve his or her goals and feel good. (E.g. idea that it is easier to avoid than to face life difficulties and self-responsibilities).

Question 2

Beck: generic cognitive model of anxiety

Answer 2

Fear and anxiety experienced by individuals with anxiety disorders in specific situations are the consequence of threat appraisals, which are in turn due to dysfunctional threat-related schemas.

Question 3

Basic cognitive psychology investigating information processing

Answer 3

A large and still growing number of empirical studies investigating information-processing biases in anxiety disorders.

Question 4

Information processing theory

Answer 4

Framework used by cognitive psychologist to explain and describe mental processes. (Based on the idea that humans process the information they receive, rather than merely responding to stimuli)

Question 5

Attentional bias + how to measure?

Answer 5

Toward disorder relevant threat stimuli.
When threatening and neural stimuli occur together, the attention of individuals suffering from AD will likely be biased toward threat.
- Early stage: enhanced attention to threat
- Later stage: attentional avoidance of threat

Alarming: AD patients show a increased sensitivity to perceive and process threatening stimuli
Orienting: patients are extremely focussed on one stimuli that they can’t concentrate on other stimuli. Enhanced engagement and a difficulty to disengage
Executive control: ability to voluntarily regulate attention to threatening stimuli.

Measurement: do not probe task/ visual probe task: Test to assess selective attention (measure how strong your attention is drawn toward and held by specific types of stimuli)
- 2 images presented simultaneously –> one on the left and right side –> dot appears either on left/right –> participants need to identify dot location –> dot appears on same side as threatening emotional information: responses are faster –> dot apprears on other side: responses are slower.

Question 6

Interpretational bias + measurement

Answer 6

Information we receive throughout the day is inherently ambiguous and thus open to interpretation.
AD patients tend to show threatening interpretations of ambiguous stimuli relevant to their concerns.

Measurement:
- Modified lexical decision task: probe stimuli were presented whiten the context of stories about ambiguous social situations:
–> Probe words resolved the ambiguity in either a threatening or benign (goedaardig) way:
- Homographs: written the same but different meaning (neutral/threatening)
–> example: bear (enduring or animal)
–> High trait anxious individuals get stuck to a threatening interpretation during the later stages of processing.
- Homophone: sounds/pronounced the same but different meaning
- example heart or hard.

Question 7

Memory bias + measurement

Answer 7

Individuals with AD can recall anxious information better than individuals without AD

Measurements:
- Dot probe task
- Stroop task
- Implicit Association Task: Measures reaction times in categorization process: press the left or right button depending on how you categorize it (pleasant/unpleasant). You measure the strength of the association between the neutral and feared stimulus.

Question 8

Safety behaviors

Answer 8

A defense mechanism.
- Avoidance of situations/ escaping situations

Barlow described safety behaviors as emotion regulation strategies. Emotion driven behaviors = action tendencies while experiencing anxiety (e.g. escape)

preventive safety behaviors: performed to prevent future distressing emotional responses or increases in anxiety
- Situational avoidance
- Relying on safety signals (leaving home only when accompanied, relying on mobile phone)
- Subtle avoidance behaviors (avoiding exciting activities or stimulating substances, avoiding eye contact, or avoiding touching things that might be contaminated as well as worrying, or excessive preparation).

restorative safety behaviors: performed to impede the emotional experience in a feared situation. Those behaviors most often aim at either reducing: bodily symptoms related to anxiety or the previewed likeliness of feared consequences (e.g. dying, embarrassing oneself)
- Escaping from situations or activities;
- Attempts to control or suppress emotional responses
- Reassurance seeking
- Neutralizing behaviors (e.g. washing when feeling contaminated).

Question 9

3 categories of safety behaviors PD

Answer 9

• avoidance of situations
• escaping situations when the anxiety symptoms occur
• subtle avoidance behavior performed during panic attacks to prevent a feared catastrophe (sitting down/ take medications to prevent heart attack)