Rats
Topic 6. Practical
Applications of
Classical
Conditioning
Celia Nogales González
[email protected] Index
• Techniques derived from classical
conditioning:
• Counterconditioning techniques:
• Systematic desensitization
• Emotional images
• Exposure techniques
• Aversive techniques
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
STARTING POINT OF THE DS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUtfPvus8Kg
Appropriate treatment for the elimination of fears and
anxieties in cases where there are conditioned stimuli of
anxiety:
• Fears and phobic disorders
• Cases in which there is participation of stimuli
conditioned on the maintenance of the problem:
• Sexual dysfunctions, paraphilias, asthma,
insomnia, alcoholism and other addictions
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
• SD Objectives
• Reduce fear responses, anxiety AND
• Eliminate motor avoidance behaviors
• PROCESS
• Training the person in a response incompatible
with the anxiety to be activated automatically
in the presence of those anxiogenic situations,
stimuli or people.
• Avoidance behaviors are prevented.
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
BASIC IDEAS:
• Incompatible responses
• Behaviors that cannot appear at the same time
• E.g., blowing, sipping, tension relaxation
• Stimulus hierarchy
• If a situation produces anxiety, related situations
will also provoke anxiety.
• These situations can be graded on a scale of more
or less anxiety.
• E.g., Seeing a dog from afar, a dog playing, a dog
barking
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
BASIC IDEAS
• Counterconditioning
• It is about using an EC associated with an appetitive
R as an EC in a new acquisition in which it is
associated with an IBO aversive, or vice versa.
• In the DS, this new association would begin with
the least anxiety-provoking stimuli of the hierarchy.
• Generalization
• When this new association occurs, it will spread
from more or less completely, to other variations of
the scale.
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
ASPECTS TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT BEFORE STARTING
• Fear or anxiety justified by beliefs or ideas overrated. In
this case, it is necessary to work before the beliefs.
• EG Fear of using the hospital furniture for believing
that coronavirus is spread by contact.
• Assess if skills need to be trained previously.
• EG Train HHSS before starting a DS for fear of
speaking in public.
• Evaluate if there are more than 4 phobias or if there is
generalized anxiety. In these cases, DS is not effective.
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
BASIC STEPS
1. PRESENTATION OF THE TECHNIQUE TO THE CLIENT
Just as you learned to associate cockroaches with fear, you will “unlearn
it”. You will first learn an antagonistic response to anxiety, relaxation.
Then I will expose you in imaginative situations that provoke your
anxiety gradually as you relax.
It is through this that you will come to associate the situations of seeing
cockroaches with the feeling of relaxation instead of the feelings of fear
that you associate it with in this moment.
To do this, we will look for situations in which you feel bad and we will
order these situations from smallest to largest”
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
BASIC STEPS
2. RESPONSE TRAINING INCOMPATIBLE WITH ANXIETY
Training in relaxation techniques (biologically incompatible with anxiety) (most frequent
Jacobson's progressive relaxation) (1938)
Importance of training at home
3. CONSTRUCTION OF THE ANXIETY HIERARCHY
• It is a list of stimuli that provoke anxiety
• Spatial hierarchies (distance), temporal (exposure time) and
• intensity.
• It must be thematically related and ordered according to the level of anxiety caused
by these stimuli. It helps to do.
• It is quantified in UPSA (Subjective Units of Anxiety)
• In children an ordinal scale is used.
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
• 10. Hearing the word "cockroach"
• 20. Hearing a story about someone
who found a cockroach
• 30. See a cockroach in photos
• 40. See a cockroach on the street
• 50. See a cockroach in my house
• 60. See a flying cockroach
• 70. A cockroach that approaches me
• 80. A cockroach in the food bowl
• 90. A cockroach climbing on me
• 100. Catch a cockroach with your
hands
Realistic, concrete, relevant stimuli for
the problem and provided and evaluated
by the customer (subjectivity)
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
BASIC STEPS
4. SD ITSELF
• Check if you can vividly imagine neutral item vs item related (if not,
train)
• Relaxation: indicate to the therapist
• Present the items from least to greatest intensity (vivid imagination)
• Desensitize: when the USA is 0 twice.
• Record the session
• Kill a desensitized item
• 1 or 2 sessions per week
• Generalization: tasks for outside the session
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
EXPLANATORY THEORETICAL MODEL
• Reciprocal inhibition: in the presence of an incompatible response, the
anxiogenic stimulus does not cause anxiety. both responses compete.
• Counterconditioning: associating the anxiogenic stimulus to an
incompatible response facilitates the conditioning of an anti-anxiety
response.
TYPES AND VARIATIONS
• DS in imagination (original technique)
• SD in vivo (greater generalization)
• DS in virtual or augmented reality
• Emotional imagination (children)
Systematic
Desensitization (SD)
(Wolpe, 1958)
CONSIDERATION IN CHILDREN
- Difficulty in deep (muscular) relaxation. It is recommended to have other
inhibitors of anxiety: food intake, laughter, play, music, do fun activities with
the therapist.
- Difficulty assessing the amount of fear experience in each situation
(hierarchy).
• It is recommended to start the scale with information from the
parents.
• Different methods:
– Bar diagrams (low intensity green-blue, very intense red) or visual
analogs (e.g., faces to identify situations, especially in medical
contexts for pain)
– Drawings, photos, cards
– Comparison: What scares you more, this or this?
Emotive Images
(Lazarus and
Abramovitz, 1962)
It consists of generating an emotional state that is incompatible with the anxiety (e.g.,
pride, affection, self-affirmation) through emotive images.
STEPS
• Fear situations are identified, a response hierarchy is established
• Search for emotional images: the therapist asks the child and/or the family named
after a fairy tale, hero, drawings, video game…
• The child closes his eyes, imagines a situation in his everyday life and the hero is
introduced into the narrative.
• Then the different items of the hierarchy are introduced gradually and naturally
within the story that is going away to count.
• If at any time the child feels very anxious, withdraw the feared stimulus by continuing
with the positive aspects of the story.
• This technique can be used in the imagination (story), or in person, that is, staging it
with the child (more effective).
Exposure
Techniques
TREATMENT KEY
• Live exposure to phobic stimuli without the behavior
escape (which becomes a safety signal) until anxiety
subsides significantly.
• Systematic and continuous exposure to the feared
stimulus allows the (more or less gradual) reduction of the
response of fear or anxiety, facilitating the dissipation of
the behavior avoidance or escape.
Exposure
Techniques
EXPLANATORY MECHANISMS
– Habituation → psychophysiological perspective
• Familiarization with the phobic stimulus
– Extinction → behavioral perspective
• Repeated exposure to the conditioned stimulus in absence of
the aversive unconditioned stimulus, in the inhibition of the
conditioned response.
– Change of expectations → cognitive perspective
• Facilitate new learning
Exposure
Techniques
PRECONDITIONS
• Therapeutic alliance
• Awareness and involvement of the patient (and
partners, if any)
INDICATIONS
• Phobias
• Compulsive rituals
Exposure
Techniques
MODALITIES
Gradual: hierarchy
Suddenly: flood
– Live: method of choice for the
treatment of phobias
– In imagination: situations of
difficult application (e.g., fear of
flying) or as an initial motivator
with patients who do not dare.
– Virtual or augmented reality
– In a group: effectiveness
– Self-exposure: avoid dependency
Exposure
Techniques
CONDITIONS OF THE SESSIONS
• Basic indication: keep in touch with the feared stimulus
until the anxiety is reduced in half, or until it reaches a low
level.
• Presentation sessions must be long and with a short
interval between sessions.
• The duration of the tasks must be long enough to facilitate
habituation (vs. sensitization) or extinction (30-90 min).
• The intensity as abrupt as the patient can tolerate
Exposure
Techniques
CONDITIONS OF THE SESSIONS
• The degree of activation (anxiety) in the task is not as relevant
(other than DS)
• Attentional involvement in the task → functional exposure
(physical and emotional).
✓ Observe dissociation or safety behaviors (e.g., charms)
✓ Attention to the stimulus rather than to the
psychophysiological activation
• Encourage practice in different situations, contexts:
generalization
Aversive
Techniques
GOAL OF AVERSIVE TREATMENT:
Associate a behavior to eliminate (undesired or socially
sanctionable) with unpleasant stimulation or aversive
The initial goal is not that the behavior provokes aversion in
the future but loses the initial valence or stops to give
Aversive Techniques
Aversive Techniques
• The association of a
conditioned stimulus (CS)
with a noxious stimulus
(US) will cause the CS to
cause a conditioned
response of aversion.
• Most investigated:
chemical or electrical
stimuli.
• Indicated for alcohol
or tobacco treatment
• Foul-tasting liquid on
the nails
• Garlic in a lollipop
Pipí Stop (Mowrer
& Mowrer, 1938)
Enuresis (not due to a general medical condition)
• Enuresis is an evolutionary problem of urination.
• It consists of the “involuntary and persistent emission of
urine during day or night, after an age when the child
should already have learned to control urination (5 years)
and there are no indications of pathology.
• Types
• Night only
• Day only
• Night and day
Pipí Stop (Mowrer
& Mowrer, 1938)
• Device with a sensor to
detect moisture connected
to a battery activates an
auditory stimulus aversive
(alarm).
• When the child begins to
urinate, a circuit is closed,
and an electrical current
sounds the alarm.
• The sound wakes the child
and interrupts urination by
contracting the sphincter,
and then if they can't hold it,
they have to go to the
bathroom to urinate in the
toilet.
Pipí Stop (Mowrer & Mowrer, 1938)
• The goal is for the child to anticipate involuntary
urination by activation of the reflex during the
night.
• If conditioning occurs, the child contracts the
external sphincter and either wakes up just before
urination begins or, alternatively, distends their
bladder and remains sleeping.
