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Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Behaviour Therapy’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Behaviour Therapy’ especially written for school and college students.
Essay on Behaviour Therapy
Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Definition of Behaviour Therapy
- Essay on the History and Development of Behaviour Therapy
- Essay on Behaviour Therapy versus Psychoanalysis
- Essay on Biofeedback and Behavioural Medicine
- Essay on the Strategies Used for Behaviour Theory
Essay # 1. Definition of Behaviour Therapy:
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It is the systematic application of principles of learning to the analysis and treatment of disorders of behaviour.
It assumes that symptoms are due to faulty learning and conditioning and aims to improve them by deconditioning and reconditioning procedures.
Learning:
It is defined as any relatively permanent change in behaviour which occurs as a result of practice or experience.
Behaviour:
Strictly speaking behaviour refers to the organism’s skeletal muscle activity but in humans, both what they do (motor behaviour) and what they say (verbal behaviour).
Essay # 2. History and Development of Behaviour Therapy:
Controversy surrounds the role of cognitions (i.e., conscious thoughts) in development, maintenance and modification of maladaptive behaviours.
Ledwidge (1978), Skinner (1947), Rachlin (1977),Greenspoon and Lamal (1977) Propagate the so called “mentalistic” concepts such as cognition on the grounds that theorizing about such unseen entities is simply not productive in the science of psychology.
Joseph Wolpe theorized about mental events such as visual imagery but at the same time maintained that many maladaptive behaviour (especially phobias) are typically not cognitively mediated.
Meichenbaum (1977), Beck (1976), Mahoney (1977), Ellis (1977), Bandura (1982) Lazarus See cognitions as ubiquitous, essential mediators of human behaviour.(See Table 35.1)
A. Classical Conditioning:
Ivan P. Pavlov (1849-1936):
Pavlovian or respondent conditioning. The essential operation in classical conditioning (CC) is a pairing of two stimuli.
A neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US) that evokes an unconditioned response (UR). As a result of this pairing, the previously neutral conditioned stimulus begins to call forth a response similar to that evoked by the unconditioned stimulus.
This is what is learned in classical conditioning. After learning, when the conditioned stimulus produces the response, the response is called a conditioned response (CR).
Terms Used:
i. Extinction:
The weakening of a conditioned response occurs in CC when the CS is repeatedly presented without the US. After a response has been extinguished, it covers some of its strength spontaneously with the passage of time. It is called Spontaneous Recovery.
ii. Stimulus Generalization:
Stimulus Generalization tendency to give CR to stimulus which are similar in some way to the CS but which have never been paired with the passage of time.
iii. Discrimination:
Discrimination process of learning to make one respond to one stimulus and another response or no response to another stimulus. It can be obtained in CC by pairing one CS with an US and never pairing another CS with an US.
iv. Classical Conditioning (CC):
Classical Conditioning with respect to human behaviour, CC seems to play a large role in the formation of conditioned emotional response the conditioning of emotional states to previously neutral stimuli.
B. Operant Conditioning (OC):
By B.F. Skinner, 1953:
In OC, a reinforcer is any stimulus or event which when produced by a response, makes that response more likely to occur in future.
The major principle of OC is that if a reinforcement is contingent upon a certain response, that response will become more likely to occur.
Terms Used:
i. Shaping:
Process of learning a complex response by first learning a number of similar responses which are steps leading to the complex response (also called the method of successive approximation).
ii. Extinction:
In OC, extinction of learned behaviour a decrease in the likelihood of occurrence of the behaviour is produced by omitting reinforcement following the behaviour.
iii. Stimulus generalization:
Same as in CC.
iv. Discrimination:
Develops in OC when differences in the reinforcement of a response accompany different stimuli, (i.e., OC = Stimulus control of behaviour).
v. Continuous reinforcement:
Reinforcement follows every occurrence of a particular response called continuous reinforcement.
vi. Primary reinforcer:
In OC, it is one which is effective for an untrained organism; no special previous training is needed for it to be effective.
vii. Secondary reinforcer:
In OC, it is one which is effective for an untrained organism; no special previous training is needed for it to be effective.
viii. Secondary reinforcer:
Is a learned reinforcer; stimuli become secondary reinforcer; stimuli which become paired with primary reinforcers.
ix. Positive reinforcer:
Is a stimulus or event which increases the likelihood of a response when it terminates or ends, following a response.
i. Praise is the easiest one
ii. Reinforce the reinforcers
x. Negative Reinforcers:
Are noxious or unpleasant, stimuli or events which terminate contingent upon the appropriate response being made.
xi. Escape learning:
The acquisition of responses which terminate noxious stimulation is based on negative reinforcement.
xii. Active Avoidance learning:
In this, responses which occur before a noxious event are learned. Such responses prevent the occurrence of the noxious stimulus thus noxious stimulus is avoided.
xiii. Punisher:
In contrast to negative reinforcement, a punisher is a noxious stimulus that is produced when a particular response is made. Punishers decrease the likelihood that a response will be made and thus involved in learning what not to do. (Passive avoidance learning).
Classical Conditioning versus Operant Conditioning (CC versus OC):
i. In OC reinforcement is contingent on what the learner does while in CC reinforcement is defined as the pairing of the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli and is not contingent on the occurrence of a particular response.
ii. The responses which are learned in CC are stereotyped, reflex like ones which are elicitated by the unconditioned stimulus while in OC response is voluntary.
iii. In CC—consequences of behaviour are relatively unimportant while in OC they are important.
C. Cognitive Learning:
Cognitive Learning is learning in which without explicit reinforcement, there is a change in the way information is processed as a result of some experience a person or animal has had. Latent learning, insight learning and learning through imitation and modeling are examples of cognitive learning.
D. Biofeedback or Behavioural Medicine:
Early 1980’s refers to treatment of medical disorders rather than a theory of such disorders used in treatment of hypertension, tension headaches, post-operative cases, methods to ensure intake of medicine. It provides points with information of the current state of physiological system that needs to be controlled to alleviate symptoms.
Essay # 3. Behaviour Therapy versus Psychoanalysis:
i. Behaviour Therapy asserts that the symptom is the illness and not that there is any underlying process or illness of which the symptoms are merely superficial manifestations. (Thus symptomatic relief = Cure).
ii. Behaviour therapy is applicable to unwilling patients.
Principles:
i. Close observation of behaviour.
ii. Concentration on symptoms as the target for therapy.
iii. General reliance on principles of learning.
iv. An empirical approach to innovation.
v. A commitment to objective evaluation of efficacy.
Indications:
Behaviour therapy is used for the relief of:
i. Any discrete anxiety linked behaviour.
ii. Control of impulse disorders.
iii. The development of new behaviours.
It is a treatment of choice in:
i. Phobias
ii. Nocturnal Enuresis
iii. Sexual Dysfunction
iv. Tics
v. Anorexia Nervosa
vi. Compulsions
vii. Social Anxiety States
viii. Tension Headaches
ix. Obesity
Also used to modify:
i. Maladaptive Habits
ii. Psychosomatic Reactions
iii. Drinking
iv. Sexual Role Disturbances
v. Smoking
It can also be used to promote more socialized behaviours in chronic patients, increase skills in mentally retarded and autistic children, control acting out and maladaptive behaviour in sociopaths. (See Tables 35.2 & 35.3).
Contraindications:
Those psychiatric disorders in which symptomatology is acute, pervasive or non circumscribed and in which triggering environmental events or external reinforcement are not obvious or capable of definition.
Essay # 4. Biofeedback and Behavioural Medicine:
Behavioural medicine is a term introduced by Birk in 1973, when he edited a volume entitled, “Biofeedback: Behavioural Medicine”.
Definition:
Behavioural medicine is the interdisciplinary field concerned with the development and integration of behavioural and biomedical science knowledge techniques relevant to health and illness and the application of this knowledge and these techniques in prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation. Behavioural medicine clearly has a broader perspective than biofeedback.
Theory:
Feedback from the environment about the consequences of one’s acts provides the rewards and punishments that are an important part of learning. Maintenance of homeostasis and the neurohumoral regulation of behaviour also operates through feedback loops. Biofeedback is a special type of feedback that refers to information provided externally to a person about normally sub threshold bodily processes.
Types:
A. Intrinsic Biofeedback:
Intrinsic biofeedback of neuromuscular responses is available to help the conscious brain learn psychomotor skills and perform activities, involving the three r’s- ‘reading’, ‘writing’, and ‘rhithmetic’. For normally involuntary processes under the control of autonomic nervous system, there is relatively little conscious feedback except in conditions of malfunction where intrinsic feedback is often the relatively imprecise sensation of pain.
The more precise feedback is useful when:
i. The medically desirable direction of change is clear.
ii. A response that can produce that change is, in fact, learnable.
iii. The desirable learning has been prevented by poor or wrong perception or natural feedback.
iv. Moment to moment measurement can provide more accurate information.
B. Extrinsic Feedback:
i. Specific feedback:
In which the patient is provided feedback about the actual condition that needs to be controlled such as blood pressure or properly timed contraction of the anal sphincters.
ii. Non-specific feedback:
The symptom or condition itself is not directly measured on a moment-to-moment basis; rather a patient is taught a more general skill, such as Electromyographic (EMG) reduction or relaxation, that seems to produce a desirable effect e.g., learning to warm the hands may be used to reduce the frequencies of migraine headaches, palpitations of anxiety or the sensations of angina pectoris, heart rate, intestinal contractions, kidney function, blood flow to the stomach mucosa, blood flow in specific regions of the skin, blood pressure independent of heart rate and control of brain wave frequencies has been modified.
The instrumental conditioning through enhanced sensory awareness achieved by biofeedback, may be the scientific basis underlying a wide spectrum of poorly understood self-regulation techniques including the placebo response (both positive and negative), hypnotic phenomena, meditation, autogenic therapy, relaxation, progressive relaxation and other variants. There is now also a Biofeedback Society of America (BSA).
Applications:
Applications of single biofeedback and the combinations of biofeedback are given in Tables 35.4. and 35.5. respectively.
Therapeutic Alliance:
The positive outcomes of biofeedback are reported when it has a therapeutic with psychotherapy, behaviour therapy, progressive relaxation autogenic therapy, physical therapy, relaxation response, quieting relax, imagery, hypnotic variants and coaching procedure.
Biofeedback is often termed as a “real-time physiological mirror”, may serve to extend significantly both therapists’ and patient’s sensitivity to subtle emotional-physiological components of behaviour.
Stress Hypothesis:
Most biofeedback application incorporate a stress concept suggesting that somatoform disorders develop when the normal range of homeostatic functioning becomes restricted, whether through stress, isolation, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness or unconscious conflict.
It is estimated that 50 to 70 percent of all symptoms presenting in a general practice are either induced by stress or exacerbated by a stressful bracing reaction on against the primary symptom.
According to this logic:
i. Acute:
Over activation of the sympathetic nervous system-adrenal medulla mediated emergency fight-to-flight response as described physiologically by Waltor Cannon in 1929 and more psychodynamically by Sandor Rado in 1969, may produce symptoms as essential hypertension, tension headaches, hyperventilation or irritable colon in rather consistent patterns within a given person. These hierarchal patterns are known as the “principle of psycho-physiological response specificity.”
ii. Chronic:
With more chronic stress, the hypothalamo-pituitary-adreno corticosteroid system is activated in an alarm-resistance- exhaustion defense sequence described as the:
General Adaptation Syndrome:
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) by Selye in 1950. The chronic activation of GAS may lead to renal impairment, renal hypertension, an increased rate of atherosclerosis leading to angina and strokes, duodenal ulcer, suppression of the immune systems’ effectiveness against potential pathogens and reduced efficacy of T-lymphocytic system of destroying potentially mutagenic (cancer) cells.
Behavioural Medicine:
The framework of behavioural medicine recognizes that stress illnesses are increasing in frequency and occurring at earlier ages as modern humans activate stress responses inappropriately. Behavioural medicine recognizes that a significant domain of homeostatic physiological functioning is response to behavioural stimuli, is potentially adaptive and is vulnerable to dysregulation and voluntary regulation, particularly before tissue pathology occurs.
Behavioural medicine also recognizes that in addition to the usual emotional stressors that come to mind-including fear, worry, anxiety, conflict, frustration, boredom, guilt and time pressure-in human beings, Caveman bodies which have not evolved significantly in tens of thousands of years, are not prepared for other types of stressors of modern civilization.
These modern stressors include chemical (excess sugar, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, salt, smog, DDT and food additives) and those that are physical (Inactivity, trauma, infections, excess work, congested cities, erratic sleep habits, examinations, noise, air pollution etc.).
Social Skills Training:
It is a type of behaviour therapy used in persons who have marked deficits in social skills (e.g., schizophrenics) or who have developed adequate social skills appear to lose them (e.g., a psychiatric disorder) or fail to employ them aptly to achieve their social goals (e.g., inadequate personality).
A person with appreciable difficulties in these areas often experiences social anxiety and low self-esteem and may develop depression as a consequence. These reactions in turn, may further compromise his social competence and a kind of vicious circle develops.
Terminology
i. “Assertiveness” and “Assertive training” Wolpe (1958) recognized that many patients with social anxieties are unassertive particularly in the sense of not “standing up for their rights.” He regarded “assertive responses” as antagonistic to anxiety in general and social anxiety in particular, he developed a training procedure for enhancing the assertiveness of such patients.
“Assertiveness” connotes a degree of boldness and self-confidence of expression that is socially acceptable and adaptive, and “aggressiveness” which implies a disposition to dominate without regard for others’ rights. (See Table 35.6).
Wolpe proposed the terms “hostile” assertiveness (persons who fail to correct perceived interpersonal injustices and wrongs) and “commendatory” assertiveness.
i. Expressiveness:
It refers collectively to positive and negative assertiveness.
ii. Social skills training:
The procedures whose aim is to help patients acquire better skills of whatever kind are referred to collectively as “social skills training.”
iii. Social skills:
The ability to make appropriate responses (behaviour), verbal and nonverbal, in social situations that facilitate developing satisfying interpersonal relationships and achieving one’s social goals. Social skills are essential for attaining two categories of goals. Affectional. (It includes positive expressiveness such as forming satisfying relationships with relatives, dating and establishing friendships) and instrumental (it includes critical assertiveness and involve those skills necessary for successful living in the community e.g., for a patient with chronic schizophrenia, they may include being able to make use of public transportation, medical resources and a variety of social agencies).
iv. Sending skills:
These are the end results of complex perceptual-cognitive-behavioural processes that arise in interpersonal transactions.
v. Receiving skills:
These refer to attending to and accurately perceiving problem situations and cues.
vi. Processing skills:
These include accurately interpreting interpersonal cues, generating alternatives for action, considering possible consequences for each choice and then selecting an adaptive course of action.
vii. Instrumental situations:
These are situations in which the interpersonal interaction is necessary for achieving a non-interpersonal goal, such as having a cheque cashed or renting an apartment.
viii. Assessment before social skills training:
Reliable and valid assessment is essential both for the adequate treatment of the individual patient and for progress through research. The three major approaches are- self report questionnaires, direct behavioural measures and physiological indexes.
ix. Self-report questionnaires:
Self-report questionnaires e.g., Wolpe- Lazarus Assertiveness Scale (1966), Personal Relations Inventory of Lorr (1981) and the Instrumental Skills Test of Wallace.
x. Direct Behavioural Observations:
This the most useful and researched approach e.g., Behavioural Assertiveness Test Eisler (1973), Time sampled Behavioural checklist Polsky and McGuire, (1981), Behavioural Observation Instrument.
xi. Physiological Measures:
These are three levels of measurement-self-report (subjective), behavioural and physiological.
Indications:
i. Schizophrenia
ii. Depression (Unipolar or bipolar disorder)
iii. Anxiety disorders (e.g., Anxiety neurosis, phobias, obsessive compulsive neurosis, post-traumatic stress disorders etc.)
iv. Alcoholism
v. Mental retardation or emotionally disturbed children
vi. Aggressive behaviour problem
vii. Inadequate Personality
viii. Nonclinical applications e.g., in marital relationships, occupational problems, other intense dyadic relationships.
Essay # 5. Strategies Used for Behaviour Theory:
Most of the procedures used in social skills training are similar to those used in altering or shaping other classes of behavioural within the behaviour modification techniques.
The following strategies are commonly used:
i. Instruction and Coaching.
If assessment of the behaviour of a person reveals that he avoids eye contact and speaks in an overly soft, barely audible voice when talking with a potential date, he might be directly instructed in the importance of adequate eye contact and a clearly audible voice in these situations.
ii. Modelling:
The therapist might display (model) specific behavioural components of the social performances to be learned such as adequate eye contact, voice loudness and tone and useful things in initiating a conversation, appropriate smiles and compliances etc.
iii. Behavioural Rehearsal (guided practice, role playing):
The patient practises the desired behaviours in which he has been instructed or which have been modeled for him in the therapist’s office.
iv. Feedback:
The patient is given information about specific components of his performance e.g., the percentage of time he has maintained eye contact.
v. Social Reinforcement:
Encouraging praise is given to the patient contingent on desired responses. This is especially useful for successive approximation or shaping of complex behavioural performances.
vi. Homework Assignments:
Newly acquired behaviours need to be practised. Homework assignments are especially useful for ensuring the extension of social behaviours learned in the clinic to the patient’s natural environment e.g., a heterosocially anxious, male college student might be assigned a task of approaching three female classmates.
Generalization Training:
The new behavioural skills acquired in contrived treatment settings do not necessarily transfer to the patient’s normal environment so generalization training should be an integral part of the treatment program. In social skills training, this often includes yields trips” into the natural environment, where the patient practices social skills in a graded manner under the watchful eye and coaching of the therapist. Homework assignments are also useful for generalization training.
Autogenic Training:
History: This technique is the outcome of research by Oskar Vogt, who studied the psycho-physiological changes brought about the auto-suggestion and hypnosis. Subsequently, Schultz (1905) developed the procedure of ‘autogenic training’ used to treat physical symptoms caused by emotional disorder. This technique is more popular in Asia.
Technique:
In this technique, ‘standard exercises’ are used to induce feelings of warmth, cooling or heaviness in parts of the body and also,, to slow the respiration.
Various techniques or exercises e.g., meditation, Rajyoga, Yogic postures etc. train the nervous system. These techniques use colours, objects, postures, recitation of mantra singing or listening music.
These are based of different systems of belief but the common features in these techniques are:
i. Instruction about relaxation and about the regulation of the speed and depth of breathing.
ii. Mental processes (mantra singing or listening to music) to direct the person’s attention away from the external world and from the stream of thoughts occupying the mind.
iii. Setting aside the day’s activities periods when calm or peace is to be restored.
iv. Joining a group of people who believe strongly in the techniques and encourage each other to practise it. Group pressure is there which also leads to improvement.
v. Strong faith in the system and technique is also an important contributing factor in improvement, the clergymen, priests and faith healers handle many neurotic and those suffering from psychosomatic disorders. “Healing (Faith) effect’ and “Placebo effect’ are very important in any form of treatment.
Indications:
i. These techniques are used to keep a normal person healthy and peaceful.
ii. The other indications are neuroses and stress- related disorders, habit disorders, psychosomatic disorders, drug abuse and physical disorders (Cardiovascular, respiratory, musculo-skeletal, GIT, endocrine and urogenital).