Cognitive Behaviour

Question 1

Private Event:

Answer 1

• A behaviour that is only observable to the person who emits it.
• Also called “covert behaviour”
• All “mental/cognitive” events are private events.
• Private events are not necessarily mental/subjective
  
  • e.g. a sneeze nobody knows about
• By definition, unverifiable to science.

Question 2

Public Event

Answer 2

• A behaviour that is observable by a person other than the one engaging in the behaviour.
• Also called “overt behaviour”
• Can be verified by scientific methods.

Question 3

What are the three types of behaviourism?

Answer 3

* Methodological Behaviourism
* a.k.a. Hull-Spence Behaviourism (Clark Hull & Kenneth Spence)
- Often called Stimulus-Response (S-R) Psychology
* Relied heavily on Pavlovian explainations of behaviour
* Radical Behaviourism
* Teleological/Molar Behaviourism

Question 4

Methodological Behaviourism

Answer 4

• Based off of a dualistic (“mind & body”) conception of reality.
• Distinguished between subjective/qualitive (“inner”) and objective (“outer”) world.
  
  • Outer world is the same for everyone and can
    generate agreed upon facts.
  • Each person’s inner world is potentially different, inaccessible and not necessarily causal.
• The only way to establish a legitimate science of
  behaviour was through experimental methods that were objective.
• The type of behaviourism described by most textbooks and laymen.
• Often referred to as S-R (stimulus-response)
  behaviourism.
• Evolved into contemporary Cognitive Psychology

Question 5

Radical Behaviourism

Answer 5

• First described in the 1970s by Skinner
• Based on the philosophy of pragmatism and
  rejects dualism.
  
  • Does not make a distinction between subjective/qualitive (inner) and objective (outer) worlds.
  • Thoughts, imaginings, and feelings are just more behaviour to be explained. But they are private and have environmental antecedents that are more useful for the purposes of behaviour change.
• Origins of behaviour (public and private) are in the environment.
• Does not allow mediators to act as inferred causal entities
  
  • i.e., Minds, expectancies, intentions, representations, schema, etc. cannot serve as valid explanations for behaviour.
• Focuses on terms (not methods) that emphasize the function (i.e. reason/cause) of a behaviour.
  
  • E.g., A man is observed running
    
    • Does he run to train for the Olympics or does he run to escape the police?
    • To a methodological behaviourist, the running is the same behaviour in both cases. A radical behaviourist views them as distinct behaviours.

Question 6

Teleological (Molar) Behaviourism

Answer 6

• Developed in the early 1990s.
• Created by Howard Rachlin and built off of the philosophy of Gilbert Ryle.
• Similar to Radical behaviourism in its rejection of dualism and emphasis on function.
• Does not make a public-private or a subjective-objective distinction.
• Is a pragmatic view not metaphysical one.
• What is traditionally viewed as mental events are just labels of behaviour extended through time.

Question 7

What is the string quartet question and how would the different branches of behaviourism answer it? (Plus cognitive psychology)

Answer 7

Methodological Behaviorism:
* There is no distinction, their behaviors are the same.

Cognitive/Folk Psychology:
* One person has the mental/subjective state of “hearing/listening”, the other person does not.

Radical Behaviourism:
* One person experiences the private event of hearing/listening, the other does not.
* In both cases the private events are unverifiable behaviours the person is engaging in.

Teleological/Molar Behaviourism:
* The question is flawed because it is looking at behaviour at a single point in time. Behaviour extends through time.
* Behaviourally speaking, to “hear the music” means…
* Certain behaviours will occur over time in the presence of the music and not in its absence.
* e.g., tapping your foot to the beat, saying “how much you enjoy the music”, etc.
- The difference is that the non-deaf person will discriminate their behaviours to the sound over time, the deaf person will not.

Question 8

Cognitive Therapy (CT)

Answer 8

• Cognitive Therapy emerged in the late 1970s as a response to the clinical shortcomings of methodological behaviourism’s stimulus-response psychology.
• Viewed thoughts, feelings, and other mental events as causal.
• Mental events mediate the relation between the environment and behaviour (dualistic).
• Largely based-off the work of Aaron T. Beck & Albert Ellis
• Merged with existing behavior therapies (BT) to form what is now referred to as CBT.

Question 9

Behaviour Therapies (BT)

Answer 9

- Applied Behaviour Analysis Therapies
- (i.e., what your textbook covers)
- Behavioural Activation Therapy
- BAT (Lewinsohn’s old version)
- BA (Martell et al.’s updated version)
- BATD (Behaviour Activation Therapy for Depression)
- Functional Analytic Psychotherapy
- Integrative Behavioural Couples Therapy
- Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Question 10

CBT for Depression

Answer 10

CBT has been generally successful in the treatment of depression.

Clinical contributions of CT called into question by Jacobson et al., 1996.
* CBT treatments of depression usually are a mix of cognitive therapy and behavioural activation therapy (BA, Lewinsohn’s 1974).
* Jacobson et al. ran a clinical trial that separated various therapeutic components.
* BA alone was as effective as the full CBT treatment.
* These findings led to refinements in Behavioural Activation Therapy
* See Jacobson et al. (2001)

Question 11

Cognitive Behaviour in Clinical Problems

Answer 11

Examples of behavioural excesses:
* Depression
* Obsessions/rumination
* Fears/phobias
* Chronic worry

Examples of behavioural deficits:
* Positive affirmations
* High self-confidence statements

Question 12

Functions of Cognitive Behaviour

Respondent and Operant

Answer 12

Respondent Functions
* A thought or image may function as a CS
* E.g., thoughts or images elicit anxiety, anger,
sexual arousal

* Operant Functions
* A thought or image can function as an S^D
* E.g., verbal instructions to find a location
* A thought or image can function as an EO
* E.g., a fearful thought is an EO for escape
* A thought or image can function as a
reinforcer or punisher
* E.g., praise following a specific action.

Question 13

Two Types of Cognitive-Behaviour Modification

Answer 13

Cognitive Restructuring
* Used to replace maladaptive cognitive behaviours with adaptive ones.

Cognitive Coping
* Used to teach new cognitive-behaviours which in turn promote other desirable behaviours.

Question 14

What is the goal of cognitive restructuring

Answer 14

Goal is to replace distressing thoughts with more desirable (rational or functional) thoughts
* Note: “thoughts” = cognitive-behaviours

Question 15

Steps in cognitive restructuring

Answer 15

1. Identify the distressing thoughts: From retrospective self-report or from self-monitoring at the time the behaviour occurs.
2. Identify the situations where they occur (the antecedents) and the emotional response, mood, or behaviour that follows (the consequences) from self-report or self-monitoring.
3. Help the client replace distressing/distorted thoughts with functional thoughts

Question 16

How to challenge the client’s
“distorted” thinking?

Answer 16

Burns uses a series of three questions:
1. Where is the evidence?
2. Are there alternative
explanations?
3. What are the implications?

Used to challenge Cognitive Distortions.

Question 17

What are the 10 cognitive distortions learned in PSYCH 282

Answer 17

• All or nothing thinking: Black and White categories
• Over-generalization: A negative event is veiwed as a never ending pattern of defeat
• Mental Filter: Dwell on the negatives
• Discounting the positives: Insisting that positives don’t count
• Jumping to conclusions
  
  • Mind Reading: assuming that people are reacting poorly to you
  • Fortune Telling: Predicting that things will end poorly
• Magnification or minimization: Blowing things out of proportion or shrinking thier importance
• Emotional reasoning: “I feel like an idiot, so I must be one”
• “Should statements”: You criticize yourself or others with “should’a, whould’a, could’a”
• Labeling: Instead of saying “I made a mistake” you tell yourself, “I’m a loser”
• Personalization and blame: You blame yourself (or others) for something you aren’t entirely reponsible for

Question 18

Steps of Self-Instructional Training

Cognitive Coping Skills Training

Answer 18

1. Identify the problem situation and behaviour, the desirable behaviour
2. Identify the self-instructions to be used in the situation.
3. Teach self-instructions and provide immediate reinforcement through modeling/BST.
4. Use the self-instructions in the problem situation to guide desirable behavior.