PSYC 3339 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14: Assertiveness, Exposure Therapy, Psychopathology

• School: University of Houston
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3339
• Professor: Szafranski Derek

Document Summary

Origins of behavioral therapy: behavioral therapy clinical application of behavior principles, which have experimental and theoretical roots extending back hundreds of years. A benefit of defining problems in behavioral terms is that such definitions make it easy to identify target behaviors and measure changes in therapy. It is a more active style of learning the organism much take an action of some kind: skinner consequences shape all behavior, including behavior labeled as abnormal, all actions are governed by contingencies if/then. By changing contingencies that control a clie(cid:374)t(cid:859)s (cid:271)eha(cid:448)io(cid:396), the(cid:455) (cid:272)a(cid:374) i(cid:374)du(cid:272)e sig(cid:374)ifi(cid:272)a(cid:374)t behavioral changes. Techniques based on classical conditioning: exposure therapy, phobias are best understood as the result of classical conditioning, a particular stimulus is paired with an aversive outcome. This pairing can be weakened and ultimately eliminated if the client experiences one without the other. Imaginal exposure imagining anxiety-provoking objects, without being exposed to the real thing.