psychology

Question 1

what theories are there for phobias?

Answer 1

psychodynamic
learning theories
biological
cognitive

Question 2

what are the learning theories for phobias?

Answer 2

Watson and Rayner (1920)- Little albert conditioning - Classical conditioning
Mowrer (1960) - two stage model
Davey (1997) - outcome expectations
Bandura (1977) - social learning theory/ observational learning

Question 3

what are the pros of the learning model in phobias?

Answer 3

• can account for any stimulus becoming fearful

Question 4

what are the cons of the learning model in phobias?

Answer 4

Rachman (1977) pointed out:
Not all people who have phobias can remember a traumatic event at the onset of their phobia (although memories become biased and forgotten over time)
Not all people who have a traumatic event go on to develop a phobia
We should expect that all stimulus are equally likely to develop a fear evoking response, and yet there is an uneven distribution of phobias. many more people have phobias of snakes, dogs, heights, water, thunder and fire than guns, knives and electrical outlets yet the latter seem to have a higher likelihood of being associated with pain and trauma

Question 5

what support is there for the learning model in phobias?

Answer 5

Dollinger et al (1984) - found that children surviving a lightning strike showed more numerous and intense fears of thunder than control children
Yule et al (1990) - found that teenagers that have survived a sinking cruise ship showed excessive fears of water, ships and swimming and even modes of transport than their normal peers
Both of these suggest that a single traumatic event can lead to intense fears of objects related to traumas

Question 6

what does davey’s outcome expectations suggets

Answer 6

Davey 1997 has suggested that the likelihood of whether an association is made between a stimulus and a traumatic event depends upon the person’s expectations prior to the learning episode. For example if we expect something bad to happen when we see a spider, and something bad does happen,then we are more likely to associate it spiders and trauma than if we had previously expected something good to happen.

Question 7

what are the biological theories of phobias?

Answer 7

Siegelman (1971) - biological preparedness
Poulton and Menzies (2002) - non-associative explanations
Disgust / disease avoidance

Question 8

what is the diiference between the preparedeness theory and non-associative fear aquisitions?

Answer 8

Preparedness theory = born with a predisposition to learn to fear these stimuli quickly; Nonassociative explanations = born with an innate tendency to fear

Question 9

what support is there for the biological theories (phobias)?

Answer 9

It explains why we have some common themes in what people fear, especially to objects that don’t pose as much threat to our safety than other more modern objects
Children go through a fairly rigid developmental pattern of acquiring normal fears
It also does not exclude the idea that people can learn to fear certain stimuli more irrational fears

Question 10

what are the critisisms of the biological theories (phobias)?

Answer 10

May not be realistic - e.g the fear for spiders is likely to never have been a significant threat for humans even in our phylogenetic past
Theoretical problem - in the absence of a time machine, we can never know what actually caused threat to our ancestors

Question 11

what is the disgust theory?

Answer 11

Some phobias are associated with the emotion of disgust (food rejection emotion, whose purpose is to prevent the transmission of illness)

Question 12

what do the cognitive theories suggest that fear is caused by?

Answer 12

cognitive bias

maladaptive thinking

Question 13

evidence for cognitive bias of phobias?

Answer 13

Ohman and Soares (1994) - people with snake phobias exhibited a fear response to pictures of snakes that were masked by another stimulus (so that the snake could not be consciously perceived), non phobics did not exhibit fear response/
Emotional stroop procedure on people with phobia found that people had attentional bias to threat relevant stimuli - an emotional stroop procedure was developed do that people had to name the colour of the words when some works were threat-relevant (fangs, hairy and crawl) and others that were not threat relevant (e.g. spoon, chair). It was found that people with a phobia took longer to process threat relevant stimuli than non-threatening stimuli and for controls it took just as long to process both. This means that anxious people were attending to threatening stimulus for longer.

Question 14

what does maladaptive thinking suggest about people with phobias.

Answer 14

has also suggested that rumination can lead to the enhancement of self-reported anxiety in phobic people. This is thought to enhance anxiety.

Question 15

what are the problems of the cognitive theories of phobias?

Answer 15

Do not explain why some people have these maladaptive thoughts and others not.
Does the disorder come from thoughts or do the thoughts come from the disorder? - it could be possible that phobias are learnt but biased and maladaptive thinking exaggerate and maintain feelings of anxiety

Question 16

what are the theories of panic?

Answer 16

biological
cognitive
bahvioural

Question 17

biological theories of panic?

Answer 17

Failure to regulate autonomic nervous system
Klein (1993) - suffocation false alarm theory
Reiman et al (1986) - overactive noradrenergic transmitters

Question 18

cognitive theories of panic?

Answer 18

Clark (1986) - catastrophic misinterpretation of bodily sensations and hypervigilance.

Question 19

behavioural theories of panic?

Answer 19

Goldstein (1978) - fear of fear

Question 20

what are the critsisms to reimans theory on panic?

Answer 20

It is difficult to know whether increased activation caused the panic or was a byproduct of it
They may also have deficiencies in noradrenergic neurotransmitters (eg. serotonin ) which makes the fight or flight response hyperactive (so the threshold of panic is permanently reduced

Question 21

describe Clark (1986) cognitive theory of panic?

Answer 21

Trigger stimulus - Believed that even though panic attacks appeared to be uncued, there is usually a trigger stimulus.These can be either external (like in agoraphobia) or internal (ie thoughts and bodily sensations).
Perceived as threatening - The trigger stimulus is perceived as threatening, so they are seen as predictors of impending danger.
Apprehension- This perceived threat causes apprehension
Bodily sensation - Apprehension is associated with a variety of bodily sensations, such as increase in heart rate or sweating
Catastrophic interpretation - The bodily sensations are then interpreted in a catastrophic way.
Cycle continues and causes ‘panic attack’ - This causes an increase in the threat and apprehension is experienced. When apprehension is greater, he bodily sensations increase again and this leads to more misinterpretations and so on and so forth- leading to a panic attack
Leads to safety behaviours - Theses are behaviours which anxiety sufferers engage in because they believe that by engaging in them they will prevent some negative outcome. Typically these behaviours are counterproductive in that they prevent a person from gathering accurate information about the true state of the world and merely reinforce their biased view of reality.

hyeprvigalence theory- Clark (1986) also stated that people who have developed a tendency to interpret their bodily sensations catastrophically become hypervigilant and scan their bodies for sensations. This internal focus allows people to interpret sensations that others would not, and interpret them as evidence for some mental disorder.

Question 22

possitives associated with clarks (1986) model of panic?

Answer 22

1. misinterpret body sensations - People with panic disorder may misinterpret their bodily sensations as signs of impending physical disaster more than controls - Clark (1994) reported that successful treatment of panic patients reduces the level of misinterpretations of their bodily sensations
2. Thoughts of imminent danger seem to accompany panic attacks (Beck et al, 1985)
3. Panic disorder patients report more negative cognitions when panic is induced
4. Unexplained physiological arousal can also lead to panic attacks

Pros of the model
It accounts for both panic attacks triggered by a state of heightened anxiety and panic that appears randomly (or apparently randomly)

Question 23

what are the disadvantages of clarks theory?

Answer 23

It isn’t clear whether the cognitive bias cause panic or panic causes cognitive bias and then maintain the disorder.
There is virtually no research that looks at whether cognitive biases are driven by biological mechanisms or are learnt through experience

Question 24

describe the learning thoery of panic.

Answer 24

Learning theorists have tried to explain panic in terms of fear of fear (Goldstein, 1978)
This explains how hinges on a low somatic sensation of anxiety or arousal can be associated with sudden bursts of anxiety. For example: Low-level symptoms act as conditioned stimulus (cs) that are associated with high levels of anxiety (ucs)

Question 25

critisisms of the learning theory of panic.

Answer 25

McNally (1990) says that the conditioned and unconditioned stimulus are both anxiety, so anxiety seems to indiscriminately act as a predictor and an outcome.
This account also predicts that any occurrence of the (cs) should lead to a panic attack, yet this is not the case.
Also, if cs occurs without a panic attack, then we should predict that anxiety should extinguish with time, but it doesn’t.

Question 26

theories of social phobias?

Answer 26

biological
social factors
cognitive files

Question 27

describe the temperement style of somebody with social anxiety?

Answer 27

Children who exhibit behaviourally inhibited temperament style are at increased risk for subsequent social anxiety disorders (Neal et al 2002), this could mean that it it could be our temperament (that we are either born with or acquire from learning that influences this). Parent-child interactions are suggested to be important.

Question 28

describe the genetics of social anxiety?

Answer 28

Lieb (2002) says :Children with social anxiety disorder, are more likely to have parents with the disorder than non phobic children, this suggests that they may be some genetic link. There haven’t been specific genes found related to social anxiety per se, however, there have been a genes identified associated with socially anxious traits (i.e shyness and introversion).

Question 29

critisisms of temeprement vulnerability ot anxiety?

Answer 29

Also true that some behaviourally inhibited children do not develop social anxiety

Question 30

who proposes the cognitive model for social phobias?

Answer 30

clark and wells 1995

Question 31

what are the three stages of clark and well (1995) model?

Answer 31

• before social interaction
• during social interactions
• after social interaction

Question 32

Describe the process before a social interaction in clark and wells (1995) model ?

Answer 32

Before a social interaction (4)
Develop a set of assumptions - On the basis of early experiences social phobics develop a set of assumptions about themselves and social situations that affect the way in which they interpret social situations.
For example Hackmann et al (2000) found that patients with social phobia frequently reported experiencing negative, distorted images when anxiety- evoking situations and that these images are commonly linked to memories of adverse social events at the time of the onset.
Negative interpretation of normal social events (cognitive bias) - These assumptions lead the socially phobic to interpret the normal social interactions in a negative way ( negative bias e.g interpreting student yawing as ‘I’m boring’ rather than ‘ they are hungover’).
Trigger anxiety programme - These assumptions and the perceived social threat result in them to trigger an anxiety programme, characterised by three interlocking components (somatic and cognitive symptoms, safety behaviours and how the person sees themselves as a social object)
Pre-mortem - Social phobics also review the possible outcomes of social interaction prior to entering in them (this is called pre-mortem) recollections of post failures, negative images of themselves and predictors of poor performance and rejection dominate these thoughts. This pre-mortem can lead to complete avoidance of the situation, or simply put the person in a negative processing state in which failure is expected and signs of acceptance are rejected.

Question 33

describe the stage of clark and wells (1995) model - during social interactions?

Answer 33

Somatic and cognitive symptoms: these are reflective responses triggered by the perceived threats (e.g blushing, trembling, increased heart rate, mental blocks, lack of concentration, palpitations). Any of these behaviours can be taken as further evidence of threat. This in turn can lead to further anxiety much the same way as the vicious cycle of panic is established.
Safety behaviours: like panic patients, socially anxious people engage in safety behaviours to reduce social threat and feared outcomes. These behaviours are often directly related to the outcome of fear (e.g avoiding eye contact). These often have detrimental effects (for example reducing eye contact and avoiding talking can make you seem disinterested in the conversation). As such safety behaviours can prevent disconfirmation of false beliefs and can increase the likelihood of negative outcomes.
Processing the self as a social object - the crucial component of this processing model is that social phobias show a drift in attention. When they believe that they are under social scrutiny they focus inwardly and monitor their behaviours (rumination). This introspective information is used to construct an impression of what they believe others think of them, as if they were someone else looking at them. As such, they end up in a closed feedback loop in which internally generated information heightens their belief in danger of negative evaluation and discomforting information is ignored or avoided.

Question 34

describe the processes that Clark and Wells (1995) beleived to occur after social interaction for someone with a social phobia?

Answer 34

After the social interaction
Post mortem - after the social interaction anxiety does not necessarily subside. Social phobics tend to conduct as post-mortem of the social event that typically involves them thinking about ambiguous signs of social acceptance,, the preoccupation will be with anxious feelings and negative self perceptions and the ambiguous information will be interpreted as negative.

Question 35

what is the support for Clark and Wells (1995) model?

Answer 35

When entering a social situation, people with social phobia do seem to shift their attentional focus towards detailed monitoring and observations of themselves as a social object (hoffman, 2000). This also has been seen to make them aware of their somatic and cognitive symptoms triggered by perceived threat (Wells, 2001).
Social phobics do tend to use safety behaviours as coping strategies to reduce the risk of negative evaluation from others
The role of post event processing has been supported by rachman et al (2000) and found associated with elevated levels of anxiety
Socially anxious people have reported difficulty in attempts to forget or suppress pats social events

Question 36

what are the critisims of Clark and well’s model (1995)

Answer 36

• Does little to tell us why behaviours in panic and social phobia disorder happen
• Does not explain why some of us get in and others not

Question 37

personality traits of people with GAD

Answer 37

Tend to be high perfectionists and have feelings of responsibility for negative outcomes, which suggests that they have certain characteristics (learned or biological) that drive them to attempt to think about resolving problematic issues.
They also tend to have poor problem solving confidence - leading them to worry in ways that reflect personal inadequacies.

Question 38

what is the GABA neurotransmitter theory of GAD?

Answer 38

In the 1950’s a family of bendodiazamine drugs appeared to reduce anxiety.
Benzodiazepines increase the activity of the neurotransmitter known as gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). This neurotransmitter carries inhibitory messages between neurons so that when t binds to the neural receptor, that neuron is inhibited from firing.
This has lead to the idea, that people with GAD may have a deficiency in GABA in their brains (and hence are anxious).
As with most psychological disorders , the area that the neurotransmitter acts is the limbic system (this controls emotional, physiological and behavioral response).
HOWEVER, this theory is very much in its infancy and further studies (especially on humans) are needed to unearth the role of GABA in GAD

Question 39

genetic features of GAD?

Answer 39

Studies looking at genetic factors have remained inconsistent
One major twin study does seem to suggest a genetic predisposition for GAD (Kendler et al 1992) however it appears that genes that have been isolated predict a general neurotic vulnerability rather than specifically for GAD

Question 40

describe the attenuation bias for people with GAD

Answer 40

This suggests that people with GAD are vigilant for threatening stimuli

Question 41

what are the two main cognitive theroies of GAD

Answer 41

attenuational

misintepretation of unambiguous information

Question 42

what is the evidence for attenuational bias for GAD

Answer 42

Emotional stroop tasks -Using emotional stroop tasks it has been shown that anxious individuals,and specifically individuals with GAD, are slower to name the colours of words when those words are threatening, even when the words are presented too quickly to consciously perceive them (Mathews and MacLeod, 1994)

Question 43

misinterpretation of unambiguous info in gad

Answer 43

People who were anxious were more likely to interpret the phrases negatively compared to the non-anxious controls.
Implications for cognitive bias = this suggests that people with anxiety perceive more threat in their environment than people without anxiety (they see threats that others don’t)

Question 44

learning theories of anxiety?

Answer 44

Watson and Rayner (1920)- Little albert conditioning
Mowrer (1960) - two stage model
Davey (1997) - outcome expectations
Bandura (1977) - social learning theory/ observational learning
Goldstein (1978) - fear of fear

Question 45

what is the vulnerability factors of depression, identified by brown and harris (1978)

Answer 45

Loss of one’s mother before the age of 11
lack of a confiding relationship
more than three children under the age of 14 at home
Unemployment
Being female
Divorced/separated
Major adverse life advent

Question 46

whatat a are the cognitive bias in depression

Answer 46

Arbitrary influence - e.g. my friends didn’t pick up the phone therefore they must be avoiding me!
Selection abstraction - abstracting detain out of context
Overgeneralization - e.g. if you have an argument with a friend, you start to think that everyone hates you
Magnification and minimization - over planning potential negative events and underplaying positive ones.
Personalisation - this involves attributing negative events to you (internal attribution), despite evidence of the country.
Absolute dichotomous thinking - this is all-or-nothing approach (e.g. if i fail my exams, my life is ruined). There is no room for alternatives
‘Should’ and ‘must statements - beliefs about what a person should and shouldn’t do and generally reflect the schemata that a person has (e.g perfectionalisation, ‘ I must be the best at everything’).