Unit on Behavior Therapy

Slide 1: Behavior therapy

• Skinner, Bandura, Wolpe, Meichenbaum and others

Slide 2: Behavior therapy's assumptions:

• No such thing as mind, thought, or unconscious.
• No mind/body dualism.
• No such thing as personality.
• Learning principles determine those things that we see as thought, attitudes, and habits.
• Past influences the past, but only inasmuch as our past affects current reinforcement schedules.
• "Symptoms" are the consequence of reinforcement history.
• To change behavior, we must change stimulus/response relationships.

Slide 3: Equipotentiality of organisms (historical proposal)

Slide 4: Equipotentiality of organisms (current ideas)

• Prepared associations (Garcia)
• food and illness, not place and illness
• Species-specific learning (Breland & Breland)

Slide 5: Kinds of learning

1. Operant conditioning
2. Classical conditioning
3. Modeling

Slide 6: Reinforcers

• Nature of reinforcers
• Primary
• Conditioned
• Nature of reinforcement -- always identified by increases in the frequency of the behavior
• Positive
• Negative

Slide 7: Punishment

• How is punishment different than reinforcement?
• What are the disadvantages of punishment?

Slide 8: Aversive stimuli

• If organism can get away: Escape learning.
• If organism can't: Punishment.
• If organism is afraid that punishment will occur and acts to prevent this: Avoidance.

Slide 9: Learning principles

• Generalization
• Discrimination
• Extinction
• Spontaneous recovery
• Reinforcement schedules
• Fixed interval
• Variable interval
• Fixed ratio
• Variable ratio

Slide 10: Where does psychopathology come from?

• Adaptive and maladaptive behaviors are learned
• Time, place and culture determine whether something is identified as psychopathology.

Slide 11: Causes of psychopathology

• Problematic reinforcement
• Reinforced for maladaptive behaviors
• Punished for adaptive behaviors
• Unclear how to earn reinforcers
• Problematic reinforcement schedules
• Unclear discriminant stimuli

Joseph Wolpe: Anxiety is ANS arousal to noxious stimulus
            Maladaptive when there is no threat!

M.E.P. Seligman: learned helplessness (depression) in response to an environment that does not allow one to escape aversive stimuli

Slide 12: Functional analysis of behavior

Slide 13: Overview of functional analysis

1. State problem in behavioral terms.
2. Identify your goals.
3. Take baseline measures.
4. Identify and change stimuli controlling behavior.
5. Monitor changes in behavior.

Slide 14:

• Both parties should be able to "see" the problem.

Slide 15:

• Both parties should agree on goals.
• Both parties should agree about what goal would look like.
• Define goals that client can control.
• Define goals in terms of client's actions.

Slide 16:

• Understand context (ABC).
• Pay attention to both the problem and exceptions.
Everyone has strengths and successes!

Slide 17:

    Antecedents            Behavior               Consequences
      What was               What did                What happened
      happening?             you do?                 next?
        Time, mood,
        setting, etc.

Ex:   I'm grumpy.             Sleep in.              Feel bad and
                                                     guilty.

Ex:   Wake up, hear           Exercise.              Feel good and
      alarm and get                                  have increased
      up before 6:45am.                              energy.
 

Slide 18:

• Understand context (ABC).
• How frequently was the behavior occurring before the intervention was introduced?
• Recognize and use reactivity.

Slide 19:

• Change stimuli that "pull" the behavior.
• Identify stimuli that prevent the behavior.
• What are effective reinforcers and punishers?
• Choose a stimulus that will not satiate rapidly.
• When and how will you give these?
• Act!!!

Slide 20:

• If plan works, behavior should change in desired direction.

Slide 21: Other considerations

• Engage social support.
• Use social reinforcers.
• Make rewards contingent on desired behavior.
• Use immediate reinforcers, when possible.
• Make rewards achievable.
• Work for generalization of results.

Slide 22: Nature of therapeutic relationship

• Action is preferred over insight.
• Insight is not necessary.
• This is a directive therapy.
• Therapist is the expert.

Slide 23: Contrary to expectations

Slide 24: Systematic desensitization

• Used with inappropriate and extreme fears
• Decreases fear by associating a new consequence with old stimulus
• Starts with easy situations and moves to more difficult ones.

Slide 25: Strategy for systematic desensitization

1. Teach relaxation techniques
2. Create anxiety hierarchy
3. Match anxiety-producing stimuli with relaxation
            -incompatible responses

Slide 26: Why do we use scales and hierarchies?

• To operationalize behavior for client and therapist
• To make distinctions
• To observe change

Slide 27: Issues to consider about systematic desensitization

• How far up hierarchy do you go?
• When else might you use a hierarchy?
• To help client recognize degree of difficulty
• To objectively define concerns that are difficult to communicate.

Page by jms
URL= http://psy1.clarion.edu/jms/cptbehaviorpp.html

Last modified October 12, 2001.