Week 1: Emotion Theory Flashcards
What are 3 important aspects of emotion? (3)
-Physiological Aspects
-Cognitive Aspects (including conscious and unconscious)
-Motoric Aspects
How would one define attitude, as distinct from emotion?
Attitude refers to a chronic disposition towards a salient object.
WHEREAS: Emotion refers to one’s current state towards a salient object
How would one define ‘mood’ as distinct from ‘emotion’?
Mood refers to a current state, but without a salient object.
Example: One can have a low mood without a clear reason, but an emotion will have a clear narrative for feeling sad.
Define Temperament so that it is distinct from emotion
Emotion refers to one’s current state towards a salient object. Temperament is a chronic disposition without a salient object.
Essentially, temperament is how one generally reacts to life.
Emotion has been characterized as having two dimension, what are they? (2)
-Low & High Arousal
-Negative & Positive Valence
What are the functions of emotions?
???
How would fear be perceived according to
Schachter-Singer: The Two-Factor Theory of Emotions?
- Stimulus causes physical arousal
- Cognitively label the physical response and associate it with an emotion
- We feel the emotion
How would fear be perceived according to
Cognitive Appraisal Theory?
- Stimulus
- Thought, labeling the stimulus + immediate experience of physiological response
- Fight or Flight
During imaginal exposure, what are some things you can say to enhance arousal? (6)
- What happens?
- What do you see?
- What do you hear?
- What do you
smell? - What do you taste?
- What do you feel in/on your body?
During imaginal exposure, what are some examples of what NOT to ask?
- What do you think?
- What is going through your head?
- What does this to you?
- What do you feel?
In imaginal exposure, what are some ways to decrease the client’s level of anxiety? (9)
-Past Tense
-3rd Person singular
-Eyes open
-General Story
-No sensory information
-Fast forward pictures
-Passing hotspots
-Choose situation lower in anxiety hierarchy
-No exposure to in vivo elements
Imaginal Exposure: What is an SUD? What should you as a therapist do with them during exposure?
-Subjective Unit of Discomfort
-Client self-rating of anxiety on a scale of 1-10
-Throughout exposure, therapist should ask for client’s SUD and write them down.
What is latent inhibition in learning theory?
Prior exposure to the CS before the CS and US are ever paired will reduce the amount of subsequent conditioning.
Therefore, a child who sees one parent interact fearlessly with object of the other parents phobia (observational learning), before witnessing the reactions of the phobic parent, they may become “immunized” to the conditioning
What is the given example of a contextual variable during conditioning and what effect does it have? (2)
-For example, managing to escape from the traumatic event will have an impact on the amount of fear associated with the trauma
-In the dog example, the girl who did not end the attack herself was more traumatized
What are two examples of Post-event variables which strengthen the CR, apart from the inflation effect in learning theory? (2)
US re-evaluation effect:
-When person receives information about the CS being more dangerous than when they initially experienced it with the US
Mental rehearsal
-A behaviour associated with strengthening of the CS-US pairing.
True or False:
Avoidant parents are a risk factor for their children to development social phobia, and the mechanisms behind this include modeling and reinforcement
True
Define Inflation Effect
Exposure to a more intense traumatic experience (not paired with the CS) after conditioning of a mild fear is likely to show an increase of the fear for the CS
Are all neutral stimuli fundamentally just as likely to become phobic objects? (2)
No.
Evidence of evolutionary preparedness to associate certain objects with aversive events. They can even be conditioned unconsciously.
True or False
Although Fear-relevant CSs can be quickly acquired, they are just as easy to treat as any other fear.
False
Fear learning with fear-relevant CSs is more impenetrable to conscious cognitive control than is fear learning with fear irrelevant CSs.
According to Öhman et al. (1985), how might prepared fears explain the presence of Social Phobia? (3 points)
- Social anxiety is a byproduct of the evolution of dominance hierarchies.
- Social stimuli signaling dominance and intraspecific threat should be fear-relevant or prepared CSs for social anxiety.
- This can also happen unconsciously: knowing that a situation is safe, but experiencing anxiety that is automatically activated in response to subtle cues that are not consciously processed.
true or false:
Behavioral inhibition predicts not only the onset of many specific phobias in childhood but also social phobias in adolescence.
True
What has been found regarding perceptions of uncontrollability and Social Phobia? (4)
Perceptions of uncontrollability is a vulnerability:
o Uncontrollable (but not controllable) electric shock increases submissiveness
o Repeated social defeat leads to increased submissiveness to any other conspecific behaving in an aggressive manner
o Repeated social defeat produces learned helplessness
What is exteroceptive conditioning?
A stimulus that arises in the external world and is sensed by an organism through any of the five senses of sight, smell, hearing, touch, or taste.
Which type of conditioning is central to the development of agoraphobia?
Exteroceptive Conditioning
How does interoceptive conditioning relate to Panic Disorder?
Development of a “fear of fear”.
(being afraid that raised heart is causing heart attack)
How can you distinguish panic and anxiety?
o Panic is accompanied by strong autonomic arousal, extreme fear and fight-or-flight action tendencies
o Anxiety is accompanied by apprehension, worry, and tension
True or False:
Only panic is central to panic disorder
False
Both panic and anxiety are central to PD and PDA!
Why is gender and employment seen as risk factors for panic disorder?
According to learning theory, avoidance is enabled by those who have the flexibility to not regularly leave their homes. This allows panic disorder to maintain and grow.
True or false:
Perceived lack of control is not a vulnerability factor for Panic Disorder
False
Similarities between symptoms of PTSD and effects of uncontrollable and unpredictable
stress (4)
Heightened GAD and enhanced passive avoidance in animals exposed to uncontrollable and unpredictable stress
Relative insensitivity to pain produced by cues associated with uncontrollable stress may resemble numbing in PTSD
Reexperiencing symptoms of PTSD include fear and distress at exposure to reminders of the trauma and these emotional reactions can be seen as conditioned emotional responses elicited by reminder cues.
Intense physical stressors used in animals resemble to forms of human trauma in PTSD.
PTSD risk factors in the pre-trauma phase: (4)
Sensitization through prior uncontrollable stress to the harmful effects of subsequent exposure to such trauma
History of prior trauma increased risk of developing PTSD after recent trauma
Moderate genetic contribution. Can be mediated by sensitivity
Prior history of Controllability can immunize
How might stoicism training reduce susceptibility to PTSD?
Stoicism training was found to enhance perceptions of controllability during torture. This may make the experience less traumatic.
What is “Reinstatement of fear”?
Phenomenon in which after a CS has been extinguished, the CS can regain its ability to elicit a CR by simple exposure to the US alone.
According to Clark (1999), what are the 6 processes which could maintain anxiety-related beliefs? (6)
Safety-seeking behavior
Attentional deployment
Spontaneous imagery
Emotional reasoning
Memory processes
Nature of the threat representation
How does attentional deployment maintain anxiety?
Selective attention towards & away from threat cues maintains anxiety by enhancing perception of threat.
For example, PD attentional bias towards heart rate and SAD bias away from faxes.
Why would people with spider phobia, PD and hypochondriasis show attentional bias towards threat and people with social phobia attentional bias away from threat?
Consideration of the functional consequences:
o Looking away from spider can increase fear because of not knowing where it is
o Looking away from other’s faces and avoiding eye contact it’s more difficult for people to ask social phobics questions or engage them in conversation (which takes away the threat of giving inappropriate answers)
aka. Psychological escape
What are spontaneously occurring images?
People ‘see’ their fears.
It’s common in anxiety disorders and plays an important role in enhancing the perception of threat
How are spontaneously occurring images experienced in social anxiety?
Observer-perspective
-Spontaneously occurring images in which social phobia see themselves as if viewed from outside.
-They don’t see what the observer actually sees, but rather their feared image
How can emotional reasoning maintain social anxiety?
Interoceptive, anxiety-related information is used to make inferences about how one appears to others.
Also called ex-consequentia reasoning.
- Social anxiety me partly be maintained by patients using perceived body sensations to make erroneous inferences about how anxious they appear and how poorly they come across.
What are the active ingredients in cognitive therapy, according to Clark et al. 1999 (8)
Cognitive therapy is a combination of:
-Education,
-Verbal discussion techniques,
-Imagery of modification
-Attentional manipulations,
-Exposure to feared stimuli,
-Manipulation of safety behaviors and other behavioral experiments.
Features strong emphasis on:
-Within session work
-Working with high affect
Video feedback has been noted to sometimes backfire in cognitive therapy, how might one address this? (Clark et al., 1999)
(3)
Ask patients to:
- Visualize how they think they will appear before the video
- Operationalize what their negative behavior will look like
- Watch themselves as though they were a stranger, only drawing inferences from the visual and auditory information that would be available to any viewer, ignoring their feelings
Define within-session habituation
Fear reduction from initial activation or peak fear to end of exposure
What is the inhibitory learning model?
The original CS-US (conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus) association learned during threat conditioning is not erased during extinction, but rather is left intact as a new, secondary inhibitory learning about the CS-US develops
When does ‘Reinstatement of conditional fear’ occur?
It occurs if unsignaled (or unpaired) US presentations occur in between extinction and retest.
When is ‘rapid reacquisition’ of the CR seen?
It is seen if the CS-US pairings are repeated following extinction; being more rapid than the original learning indicates the carry-over effects of the original acquisition learning.
Which brain region is key for inhibitory learning?
Pre-frontal cortex
True or false:
People at risk for anxiety disorders show a deficit in “inhibitory learning”
True
True or false:
Using cognitive restructuring prior to exposure will enhance its’ effectiveness
False:
*Reducing US expectancy via Restructuring prior to exposure will likely reduce its’ effectiveness
*Similarly, reducing the aversiveness of the US through decatastrophizing prior to exposure may reduce any net change in associative strength, thereby mitigating extinction.
List some ways to optimize exposure (7)
*Violation of Expectancies
Design exposures in such a way that the experience maximally violates the negative, excitatory expectancies regarding the rate or frequency with which aversive outcomes occur, or regarding the intensity of the aversive outcome, which in turn should enhance the development of inhibitory, non-threat expectancies.
*Stimulus Variability
Varying the to-be-learned task enhances retention of learned non-emotional material
*Enhancing Retrieval of Inhibitory Learning Consolidation Scheduling
Basic science of learning argues that progressively increasing periods of time between learning trials enhance the retrievability of newly stored information
*Retrieval Cues
Proper use of retrieval cues evokes memory of the CS-no US non-threat expectancy without indicating absence of the US per se.
*Scopolamine
Modify hippocampal functioning in order to increase generalizability of extinction learning
*Positive Valence Training
CS valence, or the degree of fondness/aversion towards the CS, may contribute to return of defensive responding after reinstatement
*Therapeutic Strategy for Enhancing Inhibitory Regulation
Affect labeling may work to augment associative inhibitory processes within extinction or may work in an independent but complementary manner to extinction learning.
Define Passive Avoidance
Avoiding unpleasant stimuli with inaction
Define Active Avoidance
Avoiding unpleasant stimuli with action
What are the 3 basic steps to exposure interventions? (3)
- Assessment & Planning
- Practicing Exposure
- Consolidating
What are the components of assessment and planning in an exposure intervention?
- Functional Analysis
Context in which anxiety is triggered
Anticipated feared consequences of encountering fear triggers
Strategies used to seek safety from harm (safety behaviours, etc) - Explain exposure procedure, providing clear rationale
- Introduce importance of eliminating subtle and not-so-subtle avoidance and escape strategies
Avoid compulsive rituals
Reduce substance intake
What is the procedure of systematic desensitization? (4)
- Have patient relax, prior to exposure
>Progressive muscle relaxing technique - Least to most distressing
- If patient becomes anxious, stimulus is withdrawn
- Goal: Patient remains completely relaxed while being exposed to most distressing stimuli
What is the rationale behind systematic desensitization?
Involves weakening the association between anxiety and an objectively non-dangerous phobic stimulus by pairing the phobic stimulus with a physiological state that is incompatible with anxiety.
Define ‘Flooding’
Nongraduated approach in which the patient rapidly confronts his or her most feared stimuli, either in imagination or in real life, while minimizing escape from the fear-provoking context (i.e., response prevention)
Define “Implosive Therapy”
A variation of flooding:
Purely imaginal exposure
Scenarios exaggerated to almost impossible degrees
Based on dynamic sources of anxiety
>Themes, rejection, sex, etc.
>Psychodynamic elements
Why does CBT not frame exposure as “anxiety reduction”?
Fear reduction might shame the experience of anxiety
Reinforce maladaptive belief that fear is inherently bad
Therefore, anxiety tolerance suits some people better
True or False: Neuroticism is not genetically transmitted
False:
Neuroticism is genetically transmitted
True or False: Although neuroticism can lead to negative cognitions, it is not a risk factor for anxiety disorders
False
