Week 5: Behavioural Psychotherapy: Application of Psychotherapy Approaches Flashcards
Phobia
A fear becomes a phobia when the fear has a significant impact on the person and their life
Response Desynchrony
Different rate of change of different outcomes
Escape
A response that distances us from an ongoing unpleasant or aversive event.
When confronted with a dangerous situation, we typically experience fear and respond by taking
ourselves from the danger as quickly as possible
Avoid
Response to a situation ASSOCIATED with danger
Avoidance Behaviours: Escape and Avoid
So while escape responses distance us from ongoing aversive events (termination), avoidance, both active and passive, results in the omission of a future aversive event (prevention).
Both escape and avoidance behaviors can be adaptive in certain situations, but they can also contribute to the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders and other mental health issues.
Both are forms of negative reinforcement, as they strengthen behaviors that remove or prevent aversive stimuli.
Active Avoidance
Distancing from the situation (antecedent) when encountered
Passive Avoidance
Avoiding the situation in the first place
Adaptive Behaviour
Avoiding a likely event
Maladaptive Behaviour
Avoiding an unlikely event
Aversive Stimulus
Any event or object that an organism actively avoids or escapes. It’s something inherently unpleasant or undesirable that triggers a negative reaction (pain, loud noises, extreme temperatures, electric shock (in experimental settings).
Conditioned Aversive Stimulus
A previously neutral stimulus that has acquired aversive properties through its association with an unconditioned aversive stimulus. It’s essentially a learned fear or dislike.
Orval Mowrer (1947)
American psychologist who introduced the Two-process theory of avoidance learning
Covert Behaviour (Internal)
A behavior that occurs internally but still influences observable actions
Overt Behaviour
An observable and measurable behaviour
Fear (covert behaviour)
While fear is an internal experience, it can be studied indirectly through its observable manifestations (e.g., avoidance behaviors, physiological changes).
Mowrer’s Two-process Theory of Avoidance Learning
The first was a stage of Pavlovian stimulus-stimulus association, the pairing of neutral and aversive stimuli with an aversive outcome. In this way, the previously neutral stimulus acquired aversive properties. Through such pairings, a natural emotional response, fear, is also conditioned, not just a physical response.
In the second stage, operant processes take over to reinforce the behaviour. The reinforcer is the reduction of fear itself, not the non-delivery of the aversive outcome. Thus, an increase in avoidance behaviour to the antecedent, the conditioned fear stimulus, is negatively reinforced by the reduction in fear.
Criticisms of the Two-Factor Theory
- Avoidance continues after deconditioning or extinction (CS is no longer aversive)
- Success of systematic desensitization does not require elimination of fear at each exposure
- Animals can learn to avoid in the absence of an aversive conditioned stimulus
- Human avoidance learning does not depend on early fear conditioning
Cognitive Explanations of Avoidance Behaviour (Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner)
- Focus on information about the aversive stimulus or outcome
- Uncertainty (prediction error) is necessary for learning
- The element of surprise helps us learn to avoid danger
- Uncertainty is aversive and humans and animals behave to reduce uncertainty
- Waiting and not knowing is worse than the eventual outcome
Uncertainty
A prediction error in information about the probability
of an aversive outcome
Safety Behaviours
Individuals engage in these actions or mental processes to reduce anxiety or prevent feared outcomes.
A concept that has become an influential one in understanding the maintenance of maladaptive avoidance or resistance to treatment using exposure therapy.
Lucky Charms
Superstitious behaviours such as wearing lucky charms can be considered safety behaviours
Dependence on Safety Behaviours
- We learn we are safe because of the safety behaviour
- This mechanism may maintain phobia
- Can become problematic (resulting in OCD for example)
