WEEK 5 - Wave 2:Behaviourism and Cognition Flashcards
First wave of Behaviourism
*Dominant force – 1920s to 1960s
*The new approach, behaviour therapy (BT), was a major shift away from the prevailing psychiatric treatment for psychological disorders (mainly medications and physical treatments), and fundamentally different from the psychoanalytic method
*Deliberate move towards new school of psychology – revolution not evolution (a huge shift away from Freuds Psychodynamic theories it did not evolve at all)
*Psychology is the science of behaviour not the
study of consciousness
What are the three waves within Behaviourism?
- Behaviourism
- Cognitive Ideas (CBT)
- Mindfulness
Each evolved into the other and all are still used
The Main Players
- John B Watson
- Skinner
What is the history of behaviorism
- Roaring 20s
- Brought hope – focus on environment meant anyone could become anyone. - American Dream
- Jesuits- Give you a child until the age of 7 and I will
show you the man - Egalitarian approach - if there is no such thing as
human nature than no difference between people
based on race/gender etc
idea that there is nothing innate about humans but instead everything is learnt
What does behaviorism say about people?
- Everything is leant - everything you are and everything you know is a result of an experience – human nature doesn’t really exist, people are malleable
- What matters to what you are is what you learn and how you are treated
- Obsession with Science - move away from Freud’s ideas to
focus on the ‘real’ world – tangible, measurable, observable - No clear difference across species – can study human learning through the study of animals (reason I know more than a rat is because I have a richer environment)
- All behavior, no matter how complex, can be reduced to a simple stimulus-response association).
What is Habituation
- The simplest form of learning
- Decline in a tendency to respond to stimuli that are familiar due to repeated exposure (We get used to things)
-Important to notice something when it’s new – can’t keep noticing
-Used to study the minds of non-verbal
beings
Classical Conditioning
*Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
*Pavlov’s contributions to behavioural therapy were
accidental.
*Dog with food with bell
*Unconditioned stimulus – food
*Unconditioned response – salivating
*Pair unconditioned stimulus with neutral bell – neutral
stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus
Operant Conditioning
*Championed by Skinner
*Learning what works and what doesn’t – choice
*How animals learn -
*Law of effect - tendency to perform an action is increased if
rewarded and decreased if not
*Positive Reinforcement & Negative Reinforcement
*Everywhere in daily lives – not much that we do that hasn’t
been influenced by operant conditioning
Reward and punishment
Behaviorism today
Classroom – ‘behaviour modification – star
charts, time outs.
Prisons – Token systems
Parenting
Drug & Alcohol
Social Learning Theory
Phobias – Desensitisation
Cognative therapies (2nd wave)
*Ellis (Rational Emotive Behaviour Theray ) and Beck (CBT)
dissatisfied with ideas offered by Psychoanalysis
*How we think (cognition), how we feel (emotion) and how we act (behaviour) all interact together. Specifically, our thoughts determine our feelings and our behaviour.
*Humans are biologically programmed to be both rational and irrational in their thinking
*The future of the client is not determined by the past. People have the power to change their thoughts, behaviours & feelings
Cognitive therapies (in my own words)
Cognative therapies didn’t want to dismiss the behaviourist ideas.They wanted to take those ideas further so they could respond to the people that they were seeing. And so these might be quite familiar ideas to you. But this is this idea that, our cognitions, how we feel our emotions and how we act like what ha that has us doing. They all interact in together. So in this case, specifically our thoughts. So what we think about a particular experience, how we make sense of it, will determine how we feel about that. Then that in turn, will influence our behaviour.
What is Ellis’s ABC model?
A-B-C Model
A – Activating Event
B – Perception of the Event guided by our
rational/irrational beliefs
C – Our belief determines the consequence
A does not cause C but is influenced by B
** idea that something happens (activating event) and the perception of the event (either guided by rational or irrational) beliefs. Depending on weather we have rational or irrational beliefs will determine the consequences**
Where do problems come from? (relation to ELLIS )
11 irrational beliefs
These irrational ideas constitute the major causes
of emotional problems and maladaptive behaviour.
Ellis’s two most common irrational beliefs center
on approval from others (e.g., “If I am not liked and
approved by others, that is awful, and I am no
good”) and perfection (“If I don’t always do a good
job, then I am worthless”)
Where do problems come from? (relation to ELLIS and Schemas)
Schemas – the unspoken rules or underlying core beliefs often learned through childhood experiences
Schemas can be adaptive or maladaptive
Schemas act as filters – filter out unwanted information so we can attend to that which we consider important
Unhealthy schemas – prone to Negative Automatic Thoughts
Developed to incorporate biological & evolutionary perspectives - genetic predisposition & stress responses – Negative Cognitive Triad
These beliefs heighten impact of stressful or negative life events
Negative Thoughts – Trigger Corresponding Emotions – Behavioural Responses
What are Negative Automatic
Thoughts
Ways of thinking that hinder our coping.
They are:
selection Abstraction
Arbitrary inferences
Overgeneralisation
Magnification &minimisation
Labelling and mislabelling
Personalisation
Dichotomous or black/white thinking
Mental Filtering
Mind Reading
Emotional reasoning
Catastrophising
What is Selective Abstraction
Forming conclusions based on isolated events
What is Arbitrary inferences
Draw conclusions about events without sufficient
evidence
What is Overgeneralisation
– holding extreme beliefs on the basis of a single incident
What is Magnification & minimisation
Events are exaggerated -
What is Labelling and mislabelling
‘label as a perfectionist’ for example
What is Personalisation
– relatingexternal events to ourselves even when no basis for connection
What is Dichotomous or
black/white thinking –
always/never rather than sometimes
What is Mental filtering
only paying attention to something negative in the coversation
What is mind-reading
Assuming we know what others are thinking about us
What is Emotional Reasoning:
Assume our emotions represent the way things
actually are
What is catastrophizing
assume the worst can happen
Therapeutic Techniques to engage with Cognitive ideas
- Cognitive Restructuring
- Psychoeducation
- Establish link between maladaptive behaviour and client’s automatic thoughts
. - Thought monitoring.
- Trace the ‘stream of thought’ to identify the core belief –> Use socratic questioning to challenge and restructure thoughts and core beliefs.
- Exposure & Response Prevention
- Use of homework to apply learning to real
life situations. - Client learns new self-statements, alternative
interpretations, and different perspective
What is the cognitive restructuring technique
The therapist should try and capture those negative thoughts and try to change/ challenge those thoughts.
For example you could ask people to give them the evidence of that thought. People should come out with a more rational thought
What is using homework in this approach?
Asking the person to go home and keep thought records
What is the Trace the ‘stream of thought technique
When you try and work out where that thought came from.
Does this person have a maladaptive or adaptive schema?
What is included in the Third Wave – Mindfulness, Values, Goals, Acceptance of Emotions
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) - You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.
Dialectical BehaviorTherapy (DBT)
mindfulness-based cognitive therapy
functional analytic psychotherapy and more
What does the ACT approach say about
people?
- ACT says that normally in the West we are encouraged to be happy about everything and positive. But in reality life is hard and we shouldn’t have to restructure our thoughts to be happy about things (like CBT says).
Says that all emotion is valid and trying to squash negative emotions is silly.
- Questions The Assumption of Healthy Normality
- The Normal thinking process of a healthy mind naturally create psychological suffering
- Psychological problems are maintained by excessive avoidance of painful experiences (thoughts, feelings, memories, etc)
- It’s not possible to control what you think and feel - think happy thoughts
How do problems arise in accordance to ACT
- When we try to control (trying to think happy) our thoughts it actually extends the problem
- Lack of Psychological Flexibility (want people to have many ways to respond to different situations and be able to be present in the discomfort)
- Cognitive Fusion – being ‘tangled’ in our thoughts and beliefs, and responding to the world according to these.
- The thought and the person thinking the thought become one, so the situation feels real, rather than being based in language.
- We use fight or flight to avoid painful thoughts and feelings
- Experiential Avoidance – when the pain brought on by thinking is avoided or suppressed.
- Escaping private events, feelings, and sensations
What is Cognitive Fusion
The idea that we can become really tangled in our beliefs.
When our thoughts have us thinking ‘ this is who I am it can get in the way of who we are’ so we want to defuse people from their thought (create distance from their thoughts)
How does the ACT approach support change?
*The goal of ACT is to increase psychological flexibility.
Does this by:
- Using acceptance & mindfulness processes to develop more flexible patterns of responding to psychological problems
- Reduce the impact of thoughts and self stories on behaviour (want ppl to be comfortable in the discomfort)
- Help the client be in contact with their actual experiences
- Increase the frequency of value-based behaviour
In ACT, there is no goal of symptom reduction. Symptom reduction frequently happens, but it is simply a fortuitous by-product, not a goal.
The Therapeutic Process in ACT
Acceptance – accept what is there without defense
or judgement
Defusion – Create distance from thoughts to help shape & guide behaviour
Contacting the Present Moment - use of mindfulness & other techniques
Self as Context - Help clients become aware that they have a self which they can observe difficult thoughts & feelings without being caught up in them
Values –Clarifying with client what’s really important for them – then evaluate if behaviors align
Committed action – engage in behavior change
strategies to support them to take value based action
Therapeutic Techniques
Psychoeducation
Mindfulness
Cognitive Defusion – Leaves on a stream, clouds in the sky
Defusion Techniques – I’ve noticed that. I’m having the thought….
Values Exercises
Contact with the Present moment –
Grounding activities
Journaling
Struggle Switch
What is psychoeducation
Going through and teaching them about this approach
Explaining why they might be stuck in particular thoughts
What is cognitive defusion as a technique?
Invite people to imagine there is a stream and a leaf and so if you have a thought you put it into a lead and let it flow away –> taking the power away from the thought
can do this in many ways for example a cloud
