Aversion Therapy
žWhen people develop behaviours that are habitual and harmful to themselves or to others, such as substance dependence, it is difficult to help them permanently stop the unwanted behaviour.
Aversion therapy is a form of behaviour therapy that applies CC principles to inhibit or discourage undesirable behaviour by associating it with an aversive stimulus.
žThe aim of aversion therapy is to suppress or weaken undesirable behaviour.
žE.g. to stop unwanted behaviour such as nail biting, we might paint our nails with a foul-tasting substance.
žThe association between nail biting and the unpleasant taste is learned quickly.
When was aversion therapy first used?
ž1930s to treat alcoholism.
žAlcoholics were administered painful electric shocks whenever the could smell, see or taste alcohol.
žToday, nausea-inducing drugs are paired with alcohol consumption to make the alcoholic feel ill.
Association becomes so strong that the person beings to anticipate nausea as an inevitable result of consuming alcohol.
Limitations of aversion therapy
žThe learned aversion often fails to generalise.
žThis may be due to conditioning being dependent on cues that indicate the aversive stimulus will follow.
žPeople may experience the aversion only when they know that the UCS is going to coincide with alcohol consumption.
Systematic desensitisation
žDeveloped on the 1950s by psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe, systematic desensitisation is a kind of behaviour therapy that attempts to replace an anxiety or fear response with a relaxation response through a classical conditioning procedure.
žThe client associates being relaxed with the anxiety or fear-arousing stimulus by means of a series of graded steps.
žBasic principle is that the client is gradually desensitised to anxiety or fear-arousing objects, activities or situations.
Wolpe’s procedure:
1.Person is taught to relax.
2.Break down the fear arousing situation into a logical sequence of steps (steps are ranked from least to most fear-inducing).
žOnce the steps are ranked, the therapist then teaches the person deep muscle relaxation and asks them to imagine the least frightening scene on the list and so on…
žIn the end the person learns to imagine the most frightening scene without becoming afraid.
žThe best results seem to occur using real life desensitisation, such as the therapist sitting in a plane with the person or introducing them to the pilot for reassurance.
žBy allowing the client to confront the phobia under such supportive circumstances, the fear of flying is eventually overcome.
Enuresis (bedwetting)
žSome children continue to wet their beds long after they are toilet trained and out of nappies.
žThis is known an enuresis (persistent involuntary discharge of urine after the age of when bladder control is expected)
žSome cases of enuresis are caused by physiological problems (e.g. weakness of muscles near bladder), yet the condition is mostly associated with:
›problems during toilet training
›stressful situations such as hospitalisation
›underlying emotional problems relation to entering school or the birth of a sibling.
Treatment of persistent bedwetting
žCC procedures have been successfully applied in treating enuresis.
žE.g. Wickes (1958) and a team of research assistants successfully treated 100 cases of enuresis in participants aged between 5 & 17.
žWickes believed the individual had simply failed to learn to wake up in response to the stimuli arising from a full bladder and that this necessary learning could be brought about by CC.
žWickes decided to use the sound of a buzzer as a UCS to reliably awaken a person sleeping.
žThe sound would follow the stimulation from a full bladder (CS).
žAfter a series of such paired presentations, the response of waking up – buzzer (UCR) – should begin to occur in response to stimulation from a full bladder (CR)
žThen the person would go to the toilet instead of wetting the bed while asleep.
žProblem – to arrange for a buzzer to sound shortly after the person’s bladder was full.
žSolution – have the person sleep with a gauze pad appropriately positioned so that the first drop of urine closed a circuit that set off the buzzer.
žWickes found that his treatment proved to be an effective method for curing enuresis, as many children and adolescents began to wake up in response to the stimulation from a full bladder- before wetting the bed.
žThe recent modification of using a small ultrasonic monitor mounted on an elastic belt worn around the abdomen, has been made to Wickes’ method.
žThe belt triggers an alarm when the bladder capacity reaches a certain level.
Ethical issues in conditioning behaviour
žAll research with human participants must abide by a set of ethical principles and guidelines called the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans.
žCC research demands particular attention as learning happens passively and a participant might unknowingly and unwillingly acquire new behaviours.
žWatson and Rayner’s research with Little Albert would not be approved by an ethics committee today for various reasons, such as:
›Beneficence
›Respect for persons
›Participant’s rights
›Voluntary participation
›Confidentiality
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