Week 11 - Habit Reversal, Fear/Anxiety Reduction Flashcards
What is a habitual reversal procedures?
A settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is HARD to give up
What are the 3 types of habit behaviour?
1) nervous habits
2) tics and Tourette’s disorder
3) stuttering
What counts as nervous habits?
Repetitive and/or manipulative behaviours that are most likely to occur when a person experiences heightened tension
Ex) Nail biting, hair pulling, oral habits, thumb sucking, bruxism.
Not typically socially/environmentally reinforced
Have natural physiological reinforcers
What does tics and Tourette’s disorder include?
MOTOR tics: repetitive jerking of a muscle in the body
VOCAL tics: repetitive vocal sound/word uttered by a person = no communicative function
Tourette’s disorder: tic disorder involving multiple motor AND vocal tics that have occurred for at LEAST one year
What is a habit behaviour?
Stuttering
A speech disfluency in which the individual REPEATS words or syllables, prolongs a word or sound, and/or halts on a word
How do you differentiate a habit DISORDER and a habit BEHAVIOUR
When it occurs excessively w/ great frequency, intensity or duration = disorder
When is causes physical DAMAGE to the person = disorder
When it causes chronic distress = disorder
What are 2 “habit reversal” procedures?
1) awareness training
- teach discrimination of the habit and its antecedents
2) competing response training
- prompt and reinforce a incompatible response in anticipation of the habit behaviour
What are some examples of competing responses?
For motor tics….
Lightly TENSE muscles involved in the tic while holding the body parts still
For vocal tics…..
Slow deep breathing though the nose with mouth closed
Why does the competing response help?
Has an inhibitory function when the competing response is incompatible with the habit
Can have a punishing function
Habit reversal may be ineffective for ______ __________ or people with ___________ ___________
Young children; intellectual disabilities
Other procedures may need to be incorporated…. DRO, response cost, response blocking
What is the definition of fear and anxiety?
When a stimulus situation elicits autonomic nervous system arousal and the individual engages in behaviour to escape or avoid the stimulus situation
What’s a procedure to reduce fear & anxiety
Relaxation training
- Involves training behaviours that produce bodily responses incompatible with autonomic arousal
- requires practice
3 main components:
1) muscle tension reduction
2) relaxed breathing
3) attention focusing
What’s progressive muscle relaxation (PMR)?
Person practices systematically tensing and relaxing each of the major
muscles in their body
Trains a response that can relieve that tension
What is diaphragmatic breathing (deep/belly breathing)?
Focus on slow, deep rhythmic breathing to promote relaxation
What is attention focusing exercises?
Focus on neutral words, images or tasks to REMOVE attention from anxiety producing stimuli
Built into PMR and diaphragmatic breathing
Ex) hypnosis, meditation etc…
What is behavioural relaxation training (BRT)?
Person assumes a relaxed posture in all of the major muscle groups of the body to achieve relaxation
Prompts and reinforcement are used
What is desensitization?
Logic is based on the idea that fear and anxiety are learned respondent behaviours
Desensitization = extinction
What is systematic desensitization?
REPLACE anxiety using relaxation techniques as the person IMAGINES the fearful situation
Gradually move through a hierarchy of fear producing stimuli
Hopefully relaxation generalizes to the actual fear situation
What is in vivo desensitization?
Systematic desensitization with NON-IMAGINED stimuli
Maintain relaxation while approaching the ACTUAL feared stimulus
How is VR used?
Use of virtual reality and other technologies to make desensitization more realistic as well as practical and controlled
Up- front cost for hardware and software is quite high but rapidly becoming cheaper and more effective
What is “flooding”?
Client is exposed to feared stimulus at FULL intensity until fear responses subside
Rarely used with INTENSE phobias
Can be difficult to administer (ethical issues)
