Respondent Conditioning

Classical Conditioning: conditioning that elicits behaviour change by pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus

Note: This is very different from the behaviours we’ve been talking about so far. Those behaviours were voluntary and influenced by the consequences that followed them. These behaviours are involuntary reactions to stimuli. Examples might be:

Salivating when food is in your mouth

Startling to a loud noise

Blinking in response to sudden stimulus by eye

CLASSICAL (RESPONDENT) CONDITIONING

Behavioural psychologists were curious if we could pair neutral stimuli with these reflexes to produce new responses – the result of these experiments has become known as classical or respondent conditioning.

Neutral stimulus – stimulus elicits no response from individual

Unconditioned Stimulus (US): elicits a response with no previous training

(e.g. loud sound)

Unconditioned Response (UR): this is the behaviour that is elicited by the US

(e.g. startle response, fear response)

Conditioned Stimulus (CS): once the neutral stimulus has been paired with

the US over time, the neutral stimulus ceases to be

neutral and becomes a CS, capable of eliciting a response

Conditioned Response: (CR): this is the response that is elicited by the CS.

SOME TERMS

The first example is Watson’s famous, if not at all ethical, 1920s Little Albert experiment. Essentially he conditioned Little Albert by pairing a white rat (initially a neutral stimulus for the baby, who had no response to it) with a large bang (a US that elicited the UR of startle and fear). After several pairings the rat came to elicit a fear reaction on its own (became a CS eliciting the CR – fear). The video for that experiment is here (warning…it isn’t easy to watch – terribly unethical on several fronts)

Click on the next slide to see how this paradigm is diagrammed…

SOME EXAMPLES

Boy and the White Rat

US —————————————-?UR

Loud bang fear response (cry,

muscle tension, rapid

breathing)

Paired with white rat (neutral stimulus)

After pairings:

CS————————————–?CR

White rat fear response

Have a look at this next video and see if you can figure out all the parts…

EXAMPLE

US——————————–?UR

pain of air gun flinch

Neutral Stimulus

“that was easy”

CS——————————–?CR

“that was easy” flinch

THAT WAS EASY…

We can use respondent conditioning to understand how some fears and phobias develop.

Consider the case of a young woman who was sexually assaulted at a nearby park. The perpetrator wore a very specific cologne and a leather jacket. After the attack, the young woman found herself experiencing full blown anxiety when encountering that cologne or the smell of leather and could not go anywhere near the park. She became so fearful of these three triggers that she became less and less likely to venture out and instead stayed at home, losing her job and many of her friends in the process. First, let’s diagram what happened in the initial respondent paradigm….

FEARS AND PHOBIAS

Assault Victim

US——————————–?UR

pain and surprise fear reaction

Neutral Stimulus

Smell of leather/cologne/location

CS——————————–?CR

smell of leather/cologne/location fear reaction

REAL LIFE EXAMPLE

CS, then US presentation (only a few seconds)

Greater # of pairings, increased contingent between CS and CR

Extinction with Respondent Conditioning

CS without US over a period of time, CS will lose its ability to elicit CR

ADDITIONAL FACTORS…THE TEXT ELABORATES ON THESE FACTORS

new neutral stimulus is paired with conditioned stimulus

Example – now that Little Albert is fearful of the rat, we could take a new neutral stimulus and pair it with the presentation of the rat. After many pairings, the doorbell could also elicit a fear reaction. This phenomenon is called higher-order conditioning.

Example: Pairing doorbell with rat

HIGHER-ORDER CONDITIONING

As you can see, fears can be conditioned under these respondent paradigms. However, if they were formed through pairings, couldn’t they also be cured by no longer pairing the CS with the US? The simple answer to this is yes. If we had repeatedly exposed Little Albert to the rat without the loud bang, the rat would eventually lose its ability to cause a fear response in Little Albert. This is called respondent extinction. So why don’t all of our fears extinguish?

The fight/flight response is a physical, involuntary response. However, we also develop operant behaviours (remember those? Voluntary, influenced by environment?) that allow us to either escape or avoid the feared stimulus so that we are never in the presence of the feared stimulus long enough for respondent extinction to take place. Let’s look at that dynamic with the example of the assault victim…

DEVELOPMENT OF FEARS AND PHOBIAS

Referring back to Slide 8, you’ll see how we set up the respondent paradigm. Now, here are the operants involved:

Antecedent: smell leather

Behaviour: run home

Consequence: smell of leather is subtracted

If she’s more likely to run home in similar situations in the future, her behaviour is maintained by escape.

ANALYSIS OF ASSAULT

If the victim also goes to other parks instead of the one she was attacked in, she’s practicing avoidance:

Antecedent: anticipation of going to the park

Behaviour: going to another park

Consequence: avoid the onset of the park where the assault took place

If she’s now more likely to go to other parks this is an example of avoidance

ANALYSIS CONTINUED

Note that the conditioned response (fear) occurs almost immediately, so when we’re looking at escape, the respondent fear actually becomes part of the antecedent, so our analysis with both might more accurately look like:

Antecedent: smell leather + fear

Behaviour: run home

Consequence: smell of leather is subtracted and fear is subtracted

If she’s more likely to run home in similar situations in the future, her behaviour is maintained by escape.

You can see, then, that fear is a powerful motivatior for escape or avoidance behaviours.

RESPONDENT AND OPERANT TOGETHER

You might be asking yourself… “wait, I’m scared of _________ and haven’t experienced a direct association like this…how did that happen?”

It’s a good question. And the answer is partly rooted in evolution, and partly rooted in social modeling.

First, fears are more likely develop to events in our environment that once posed a real threat to our ancestors – the dark, enclosed spaces, storms, water, spiders, snakes, etc. (in fact, with no previous exposure, compared to control slides, people will automatically show a physiological response (small fight or flight response) to slides of invasive parasites – we have a “wired in” natural tendency to fear these items – it’s one of the reasons many of these fears are experienced widely and around the world, independent of current geography and culture.) Parasites are a natural threat, and therefore, naturally feared. It’s much harder to come by a person who is terrified of bunnies (unless you are a Monty Python fan) or flowers.

ONE MORE THING…

The second way in which we come to fear is rooted in modeling. I have a fear of clowns, for example. One source of this evolutionary. (and no, I’m not saying clowns were a real threat to our ancestors ?) There is what is called a “discrepancy model” in developmental psychology that states that our brain naturally experiences anxiety to figures that are discrepant (or different) from our norm. It’s why babies often freak out in the presence of Santa (very few people have a guy in the family who happens to be a portly, white bearded fellow with a penchant for red velour and white fur and suddenly shouts “ho, ho, ho” for no apparent reason.) So…clowns, with stretched mouths, enlarged eyes and big red noses, also fall in this category.

LEARNING THROUGH MODELING/IMITATION

The second source is modeling. In my case, if you’ll remember from a previous assignment, I’ve never had a personal encounter with a clown that went poorly. However, when I was little, my normally very sane, excellent parents, decided to let me watch “poltergeist” – which had a horrifying scene in it that involved a little boy and his toy clown.

I still can’t think of that scene without some anxiety. So…essentially, I came to associate clowns with a fear response and that generalized into my everyday life.

If you think about movies, in particular, but also books, art, and other forms of media, spiders, snakes, the dark, strangers, clowns, etc. are all portrayed as things to fear. We typically don’t see movies portraying a nice scene of a little girl being rescued by a big, cuddly spider, or a quirky best friend that is a clown.

Children are far more likely to develop fears than adults, partly because of their imaginative brains (for example, children will construct monsters, strange animal hybrid, etc. that adults would not typically fear). Children have what is called a fantasy/reality blur, which means that these imaginary constructs are as real to them as actual fearful items.

This is why you will never have street cred with the preschoolers if you make the absurd claim that there are no such things as monsters. They will look at you as though you’ve lost your mind. From there on, you will be seen as some kind of incompetent human and your attempts to help with the monster problem will not be taken seriously.

Quick note: The answer is NOT to play along. For example: “oh yes! I see it too, honey, it’s right under your BED! It has very big teeth, doesn’t it?” I will leave it to you to decide why that might not be a good approach. ?

CHILDREN AND FEARS

Ask the child about the monster, and what it is about it that is scary (the answer may reveal the source – a scary figure on a cartoon, a chance encounter with a scary dog, etc.) Children are often willing to draw the monster for you. Brainstorming ideas for getting rid of it instills the child with a sense of confidence and skill and engages the imagination.

I’ve often used “monster spray” with children. You won’t find it on Amazon, but it’s easy to make. Buy a spray bottle from the dollar store, have the child draw a picture of the monster, dramatically draw a red circle and line through it and tape it to the bottle as a label. Then ask the child to find three things that the monster would despise and want to get away from – in my experience, most monsters hate things like flowers, nice smells like vanilla or perfume, candy, etc. The child put these in the bottle with food-colouring and water, or “magical water” and you have them shake the ingredients together. They spray the parts of the room where the monster is and voila – monster taken care of. A one dollar therapeutic technique that makes your child feel like a warrior and all you have to do is put up with a slightly damp room for a week or two. ?

INSTEAD…

Children often develop real fears in a much shorter period of time because compared to adults, they have a more limited exposure to life, and so fewer examples to compare their current experience to.

For example: As an adult, you get bit by a dog. You have a life-time of experiences with dogs and haven’t been bit. So your brain does a little tally and decides that this dog might just be a jerk and that there is no need to fear other dogs.

A small child is bit by a dog. This child may not have had any, or limited exposure, to other dogs. The brain tallies this information and suddenly, these dog things are pretty dangerous and therefore, super scary.

BUT ON A SERIOUS NOTE…

In order to address fears and phobias we need to deal with them on two levels:

Respondent: physiological fight or flight response (need to relax)

Operant: need to prevent them from escaping or avoiding feared

object.

This is how most desensitization therapies work. Before we learn the techniques to reduce fears, some classifications of and information about different types of fears…

SO WHAT DO WE DO?

Different types:

Animal Type: (any animal or insect)
Natural Environment Type (for example, heights, storms, water)
Blood-Injection-Injury Type (sight of blood, broken bones, needles, etc.)
Situational Type (for example, airplanes, elevators, enclosed places)
Other Type (for example, phobic avoidance of situations that may lead to choking, vomiting, or contracting an illness; in children, avoidance of loud sounds or costumed characters)
FEARS/PHOBIAS

For the remainder of this module I will talk about relaxation training (deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, etc.) as a means to combat the physiological effects of fight/flight. This is a good technique for all of the fears listed EXCEPT for:

BLOOD-INJECTION-INJURY.

Why is this one different? In all other cases, the fight/flight response results in an increase of blood pressure in response to stress. In B-I-I, the blood pressure actually drops quite significantly (it is thought that this happens so that the blood moves more slowly through the system and makes it less likely you’ll bleed to death). So if you practice deep breathing, you’re likely to wind up on the floor, having fainted. So when they tell you to relax….DON’T. Instead, flex your leg muscles. They are one of the largest muscle groups in our bodies and will temporarily drive up your blood pressure to prevent you from passing out.

BLOOD-INJECTION-INJURY

Flooding: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKTpecooiec

Counter-conditioning: pairing with a CS that elicits opposite reaction

Aversion Therapy: Disulferin (Antabuse): counter-conditioning – alcohol used to elicit feelings of pleasure. When combined with disulferin, it elicits severe nausea and vomiting and feelings of illness. Essentially the taste of alcohol has now been paired with a stimulus that elicits vomiting and therefore the smell of alcohol also elicits that effect.

Bell pad for nocturnal enuresis: Combines alarm that elicits startle reaction with sensation of full bladder. Over time, full bladder elicits waking up reaction.

BEHAVIOURAL TREATMENT OF
FEARS AND PHOBIAS

These two procedures work on both the physiological side of fears (fight or flight response) and the operants (by preventing escape and avoidance). They are exactly the same except for how they progress through the fear hierarchy.

Steps

Relaxation training: Diaphragmatic breathing training to achieve deep relaxation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgTL5G1ibIo
Development of a fear hierarchy – talk about a number of scenarios with your client and rate them from most comfortable to least (e.g. if afraid of spiders might feel comfortable with spider in aquarium with lid on 20 feet away, less comfortable with aquarium top off, and worst of all with spider crawling on skin).
3. Progression through the hierarchy – this is where these two techniques differ…

IN VIVO AND SYSTEMATIC DESENSITIZATION

Progression is symbolic through guided imagery, virtual reality, stories, videos, etc.

Advantages: can use when ANY exposure to feared object causes high anxiety or when feared object can’t be controlled (e.g. spider) or when it’s impractical (fear of flying – can’t visit airport and go on a plane everyday)

Disadvantages: doesn’t generalize as well to real environment

Progression is with real-life feared object

Advantages: using real object so generalizes well to real life encounters

Disadvantage: Can be impractical if object can’t be reasonably controlled

SYSTEMATIC

IN VIVO

DESENSITIZATION TECHNIQUES

Person has full control over how high she goes up. Idea is to keep relaxed at all stages so no need to escape or avoid.

Please Note: this is actually an example of in vivo desensitization and has been mis-labeled. Notice how the “therapist” keeps checking in and reminding her to stay relaxed so that she feels no need to escape or avoid.

Systematic Example

In Vivo

EXAMPLES

4. The last step for both procedures is to generalize to the real environment. For example, we want the assault victim to be able to pass by others wearing the cologne or leather jacket without feeling the need to escape. We also want her to be able to get back to the park in which the assault happened.

LAST STEP

Erik was at the gym working out. After his workout, he made his way to the change room. As he made his way to the showers, three men suddenly appeared in front of him. All three surrounded him and began painfully punching and kicking him, forcing him to the ground, only stopping the attack once Erik was unconscious. Following Erik’s physical recovery in the hospital, friends and family began to notice differences in Erik’s behaviour. He stopped his gym membership, he began to have panic attacks in public washrooms and would have to run outside in order to feel safe, and couldn’t take his son to the local swimming pool anymore, particularly the change rooms.

1. Diagram the original respondent paradigm responsible for creating the fear of change rooms or rooms similar to the change room.

2. What operant behaviours (escape/avoidance) are allowing this fear to continue despite the fact that the initial threat is no longer present?

What desensitization procedure would you recommend and why? Show how you might use in vivo desensitization to reduce his fear – include all four steps and be clear about what you would do in each step. Include a fear hierarchy, what relaxation techniques you’d train, describe the progression through the steps, etc.
Post your answer to numbers 1 and 2 to Discussion if you’d like some feedback.

TRY THIS ONE…

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