phobias Flashcards

a03 of behavioural explanation 11

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1
Q

what is a phobia

A
  • a type of anxiety disorder
  • a persistent and irrational fear
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2
Q

what are the different type of phobias recognised by the DSM-5

A
  • specific phobias
  • social anxiety (social phobia)
  • agoraphobia
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3
Q

what are the behavioural characteristics of a phobia

A
  • signs of panic–> crying, screaming, running away
  • avoidance–> doing anything possible to not have to face the feared stimulus
  • endurance–> remaining in the presence of the feared stimulus because it is unavoidable
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4
Q

what are the emotional characteristics of phobias

A
  • anxiety –> the phobic enters a high state of arousal and cannot relax or experience positive emotions
  • unreasonable response –> emotions go beyond reasonable for feared object. they are disproportionate to how dangerous the stimuli is
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5
Q

what are the cognitive characteristics of phobias

A
  • irrational beliefs–> thinking about feared object illogically
  • selective attention–> person struggles to look away
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6
Q

what did Mowrer(1947) believe in regard to phobias?

A

Mowrer believed that phobias were learnt via the two process model:
- the acquisition of phobias occurs through classical conditioning
- the maintenance of phobias occurs through operant conditioning

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7
Q

describe acquisition by classical conditioning

A
  • process of learning by associating two stimuli together to learn a response
  • explains how we associate something we do not fear eg. lift (neutral stimulus) with something that triggers a feared response eg. being trapped (unconditioned response)
  • after association has been made, lift (now condition stimulus) causes response of fear (conditioned response)
  • consequently a phobia has developed
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8
Q

what is stimulus generalisation

A
  • stimulus generalisation occurs when a stimulus that is similar to an already-conditioned stimulus begins to produce the same response as the original stimulus does
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9
Q

what is stimulus discrimination

A
  • when an organism learns to respond differently to various stimuli that are similar
  • in classical conditioning, the organism demonstrates the conditioned response only to the conditioned stimulus
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10
Q

what is time contiguity

A
  • a principle that posits that classical conditioning is effective only when the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus are contiguous
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11
Q

describe systematic desensitisation

A

uses counter-conditioning to unlearn the maladaptive response to a situation or object by eliciting another response (relaxation)
- there are three critical components to systematic desensitisation

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12
Q

what are the three critical components to systematic desensitisation?

A

1) fear hierarchy
2) relaxation training
3) reciprocal inhibition

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13
Q

describe ‘creation of fear hierarchy’ as a step of systematic desensitisation

A
  • client and therapist work together to develop fear hierarchy
  • rank phobic situation from least to most terrifying
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14
Q

describe ‘learning a relaxation technique’ as a step of systematic desensitisation

A
  • individual is taught relaxation techniques such as breathing techniques or mental imagery techniques
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15
Q

describe ‘exposure’ as a step of systematic desensitisation

A
  • exposing patient to phobic situation while relaxed
  • according to SD, two emotional states cannot exist at same time –> this is know as reciprocal inhibition
  • therefore state of relaxation should overtake the fear
  • patient starts at bottom of hierarchy until they are completely relaxed, then move up to next level
  • at this point SD has taken place and a new response to stimuli has been learnt
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16
Q

what is flooding

A
  • a behavioural therapy which, instead of exposing a person to their phobic stimulus gradually, exposes them to the anxiety-inducing stimulus immediately
17
Q

what are some A03 points of systematic desensitisation

A

-suitable for wide range of people
-effective
-costly and time consuming
-no ethical issues

18
Q

what are some A03 of flooding

A

-not suitable for all
-may not be suitable for treating all phobias
-economic—> 1-3 sessions so saves time. can still go to work
-ethical issues regarding psychological harm