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
