phobias Flashcards
a03 of behavioural explanation 11
what is a phobia
- a type of anxiety disorder
- a persistent and irrational fear
what are the different type of phobias recognised by the DSM-5
- specific phobias
- social anxiety (social phobia)
- agoraphobia
what are the behavioural characteristics of a phobia
- 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
what are the emotional characteristics of phobias
- 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
what are the cognitive characteristics of phobias
- irrational beliefs–> thinking about feared object illogically
- selective attention–> person struggles to look away
what did Mowrer(1947) believe in regard to phobias?
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
describe acquisition by classical conditioning
- 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
what is stimulus generalisation
- 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
what is stimulus discrimination
- 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
what is time contiguity
- a principle that posits that classical conditioning is effective only when the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus are contiguous
describe systematic desensitisation
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
what are the three critical components to systematic desensitisation?
1) fear hierarchy
2) relaxation training
3) reciprocal inhibition
describe ‘creation of fear hierarchy’ as a step of systematic desensitisation
- client and therapist work together to develop fear hierarchy
- rank phobic situation from least to most terrifying
describe ‘learning a relaxation technique’ as a step of systematic desensitisation
- individual is taught relaxation techniques such as breathing techniques or mental imagery techniques
describe ‘exposure’ as a step of systematic desensitisation
- 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
