Week 5: Behavioural Psychotherapy: Application of Psychotherapy Approaches

Question 1

Phobia

Answer 1

A fear becomes a phobia when the fear has a significant impact on the person and their life

Question 2

Response Desynchrony

Answer 2

Different rate of change of different outcomes

Question 3

Escape

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Avoid

Answer 4

Response to a situation ASSOCIATED with danger

Question 5

Avoidance Behaviours: Escape and Avoid

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

Active Avoidance

Answer 6

Distancing from the situation (antecedent) when encountered

Question 7

Passive Avoidance

Answer 7

Avoiding the situation in the first place

Question 8

Adaptive Behaviour

Answer 8

Avoiding a likely event

Question 9

Maladaptive Behaviour

Answer 9

Avoiding an unlikely event

Question 10

Aversive Stimulus

Answer 10

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).

Question 11

Conditioned Aversive Stimulus

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

Orval Mowrer (1947)

Answer 12

American psychologist who introduced the Two-process theory of avoidance learning

Question 13

Covert Behaviour (Internal)

Answer 13

A behavior that occurs internally but still influences observable actions

Question 14

Overt Behaviour

Answer 14

An observable and measurable behaviour

Question 15

Fear (covert behaviour)

Answer 15

While fear is an internal experience, it can be studied indirectly through its observable manifestations (e.g., avoidance behaviors, physiological changes).

Question 16

Mowrer’s Two-process Theory of Avoidance Learning

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

Criticisms of the Two-Factor Theory

Answer 17

1. Avoidance continues after deconditioning or extinction (CS is no longer aversive)
2. Success of systematic desensitization does not require elimination of fear at each exposure
3. Animals can learn to avoid in the absence of an aversive conditioned stimulus
4. Human avoidance learning does not depend on early fear conditioning

Question 18

Cognitive Explanations of Avoidance Behaviour (Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner)

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

Uncertainty

Answer 19

A prediction error in information about the probability
of an aversive outcome

Question 20

Safety Behaviours

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

Lucky Charms

Answer 21

Superstitious behaviours such as wearing lucky charms can be considered safety behaviours

Question 22

Dependence on Safety Behaviours

Answer 22

• We learn we are safe because of the safety behaviour
• This mechanism may maintain phobia
• Can become problematic (resulting in OCD for example)