Week 1

Question 1

How does the behavioural side differ from the cognitive side in CBT?

Answer 1

The behavioural side sees factors in the physical environment as direct determinants of behaviour, while the cognitive side sees cognitions as influencing emotions and behaviour. Internal vs. External

Question 2

What are the ABCs of behaviour?

Answer 2

Antecedents: Cues for a specific behaviour to occur

Behaviour

Consequences: Will determine whether behaviour occurs again

Question 3

What key concept is involved in explaining modern day exposure therapy?

Answer 3

Inhibitory Learning: Associations are not forgotten, new CS-noUS association is strengthened which inhibits the CS-US prediction
No extinction is happening, we favour tolerance of fear instead of a reduction - although it often goes hand in hand

Question 4

What are the 6 types of exposure interventions introduced in this course?

Answer 4

Imaginal Exposure: imagining non-threatening associations with the feared stimulus, good to use when in-vivo is not possible or too hard yet

Prolonged Exposure: a form of imaginal exposure that is prolonged and in depth, for example PTSD recall memory in all detail

In-vivo Exposure: Client is exposed to real-life stimuli associated with the fear

Informal Exposure: Therapist exposed clients to emotions during the sessions

Interoceptive Exposure: Clients are asked to experience internal body sensations

Cue Exposure: often paired with response prevention is used in treatment of addiction

Question 5

What are the two paces of exposure therapy and how do they differ from each other?

Answer 5

Graded exposure: Slowly working up the way to 100 Subjective Units of Distress Scale

Flooding: Taking a very high-anxiety provoking stimulus right away

Question 6

What 6 factors maximize the impact of exposure therapy?

Answer 6

Maximally violate expectancies

Deepened extinction: combine previosuly extinguished stimuli together

Occasional reinforced extinction: pairing the CS-US at some times, the expectancy violations of the next trial will be even more impactful

Remove safety signals/behaviours

Multiple Contexts

Retrieval Cues

Question 7

What is a key difference between inhibitory learning and the learning of fear?

Answer 7

The acquisition of fear is very likely to generalize, while inhibitory learning is context specific and thus prone to renewal.

Question 8

What individual difference may impact exposure interventions?

Answer 8

How quickly a person unlearns fear, i.e. the speed with which the new inhibitory association is built and strengthened