Lewinsohn: Behavioural Explanations Of Depression Flashcards
Background- study
Seligman
Learned helplessness model of depression based on animal learning - dogs given shocks which they could not escape, 24 hrs showed learnt behaviour (not trying to escape, passively enduring shocks) this is because they learnt outcomes of their behaviour are uncontrollable so dogs will give up trying
Relates to depression as The core depressive symptom is the expectation that whatever you do nothing will change. This is learned helplessness
Aim
To compare the amount of positive reinforcement by depressed and non-depressed participants
Method
Longitudinal - 30 days
Self report
Participants
30 participants diagnosed with depression , a disorder other than depression and ‘normal’
Procedure
Asked to check their mood daily using depression adjective checklist e.g. Happy, active
Then asked to complete pleasant activities scale rating 320 activities e.g meditating , yoga
These were rated twice on the scale of three, once for pleasantness, once for frequency
Seen as postitive reinforcement
Results
Significant post correlations with involvement in more pleasant activities being correlated with more positive mood ratings
Individual differences from 0 to -0.66 therefore more to depression than reinforcement from pleasant activities
Conclusions
The link between reinforcement from pleasant activities and mood
but further research is needed to identify individual characteristics that make some people more influenced by pleasant activities than others
Background - behaviourism
Behavioural: behaviours shown by individuals suffering from depression are learnt by either imitation of conditioning
Classical conditioning: make associations between events and mood change which leads to learnt behaviour
Operant conditioning: lack of positive reinforcement is directly linked with depression
