Practical applications of Classical Conditioning
Flooding
prolonged exposure to feared stimulus. providing ax opportunity for conditioned fear response to be extinguished. Principle of extinction, not counter conditioning. Sufficiently long (30-45+ min) otherwise fear will become stronger
Medical applications
-immune system. Women who received chemo in hospital setting displayed evidence of immunosuppression when they later returned to hospital. -placebo effect.
Aversion therapy example
Alcohol taste paired with shocks or nausea. Nausea more affective because biological tendency to associate nausea with substances we ingest.
Systematic Desensitization examle
Feeding a baby cookies while presenting a rabbit (phobia) at distance. Successive sessions- rabbit brought closer to baby
Counter conditioning. recipricol inhibition
Occurrence of IR can be inhibited by occurrence of an umcompatible response. Can be done with visual imagery (imaginal desensitization vs invivo desensitization)
Aversion Therapy
Reduces attractiveness of desired event by associating it with an adversive stimulus. Sometimes carried out with use of imaginal stimuli rather than real stimuli-covert sensitization. Depends on clients ability to visualize images
Systematic Desensitization
Wople 1958. 1. Train to relax 2. create a hierarchy of imaginary scenes (fear) 3. pair each item in hierarchy with relaxation. Counter conditioning. reciprocal inhibition.
phobias
adaptive proces to avoid dangerous situations. exxagerated-overgeneralization
selective sensitization
increase in ones reactivity to a potentially fearfull stimulus following exposure to an unrelated stress event
prepardness
innate disposition to learn certain typed of behaviors more easily than other. (humans may have innate tendency to fear certain events - animals)
observational learning
phobias acquired when observing fearful reactions in others
incubation
strengthenig of a Conditioned fear response as a result of brief exposures to an aversive CS. Covert exposures to the feared stimulus, (worrying about it) can also lead to incubation
exposure therapies
encourages to approach fear as closely as possible, remain there until anxiety fades and then get closer. Gradel (systematic desensitization). Participant modeling.
placebo effect
Appearance of drug (NS) paired with active ingredients of the drug (US) With help of classical conditioning, placebos could be used to reduce frequency with which a patient has to take the real drug.
participant modeling
client can be accompanied by therapist who acts as a model to demonstrate how to interact with object
Flooding and exposure therapy similarity
client encouraged to endure a fairly intense level of anxiety.
tempermant
individuals level of emotional reactivity. to a large extent genetically determined. affects how easily CR can be aquired
US revaluation
occur thru observational learning (psychological debriefing after trauma, they are more likely to develop PTSD because debriefing may give victims the impression that there team was more severe than they would otherwise thought)
imaginal flooding
the greater the level of fear induced by the visualized scenario the better. depends on persons visualization ability. less aversive than invivo flooding. can be used with all types of fears