Behavior and Cognitive Therapies Bob Newhart Therapist "Stop it!" AP Psychology

Behavior Therapies

Behavior Therapies View psychological disorders as learned behaviors to be fixed by learning new behaviors (not searching for underlying causes) Based upon Behaviorist and Social-Cognitive approaches to personality/disorder

Systematic Desensitization Developed by Joseph Wolpe (1958) to help patients overcome phobias and other forms of anxiety Client visualizes a series of anxiety-provoking stimuli while remaining relaxed Teach “progressive relaxation training” procedures Create a “desensitization hierarchy” (series of increasingly fear provoking situations)

Systematic Desensitization 3. Move up hierarchy when can tolerate visualizing a situation without distress (now often involves real-life or virtual reality exposure) 4. Gradually weakens learned association between anxiety & feared object

Exposure Techniques “Flooding” Based on extinction Keeps people in feared (but harmless) situation and prevents them from normally rewarding pattern of escape Association between feared stimulus and fear response gradually weakens

Behavior Therapies Modeling Client watches therapist or others perform desirable behaviors – learn vicariously May be combined with gradual practice for client Aversive Conditioning Uses classical conditioning to create a negative response to a stimulus i.e. – nausea or shock with undesirable actions, thoughts, situations (drinking, smoking, etc.)

Behavior Therapies Positive reinforcements Set up contingencies (rules) that specify behaviors to be strengthened through reinforcement Has shown success with children with Autism “Token Economy” System for improving behavior of institutionalized clients - desirable behaviors are rewarded with tokens Can be exchanged for desired items/activities

Cognitive Therapies

Cognitive Therapies Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) Albert Ellis Assumes psychological problems like anxiety, guilt, depression are caused by how people think about events (not the events themselves) Aims to identify and change self-defeating thoughts (i.e. “shoulds” and “musts”)

Cognitive Therapies Cognitive Therapy Aaron Beck Certain disorders (esp. depression & anxiety) can be traced to “cognitive distortions” (errors in logic) “catastrophizing” “all-or-none thinking” “personalization” Help identify distorted thoughts/beliefs Treat these as hypotheses to be tested Often given “homework” Provides evidence to challenge distortions