Functional Analysis of Human Behavior in PsychoTherapy

Explore how associative learning changes behavior via habituation and sensitization, with repeated or intermittent stimuli. Habituation reduces responses to mild, constant stimuli, while sensitization heightens responses to intense, intermittent stimuli.

Examine classical conditioning as a core form of associative learning, linking neutral stimuli with unconditioned stimuli to produce conditioned responses. Highlight Pavlov, dog, bell, food, and phobia implications.

Explore generalization as a key process of classical conditioning, extending responses to similar stimuli, with Pavlov’s dog, phobias, insomnia bed associations, and agoraphobia progression from car to plane.

Learn how extinction reduces conditioned responses by presenting a conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus, illustrated by Pavlov’s dog and exposure to fear stimuli to treat phobias.

Explore counterconditioning by creating an incompatible, relaxed response to a conditioned stimulus, using hierarchical exposure and relaxation during car travel to treat agoraphobia.

Explore instrumental or operating conditioning, where a behavior’s probability changes with its consequences; learn about positive/negative reinforcement, intermittent reinforcement, and positive/negative punishment, and how consequences shape behavior.

Clarify the difference between consequences and consequence, their function in behavior, and how immediate reinforcement and long-term effects - illustrated by sweets and staying home - shape functional analysis.

Explain how discriminatory stimulus signals the availability of a consequence for a behavior, while delta stimulus signals its absence, guiding actions through positive reinforcement and positive punishment.

Examine how reinforcement and punishment shape behavior through immediacy, contingency, consistency, magnitude, and variable reinforcement, with adults using expectation and language to guide actions.

Explore imitation learning through observing a model, attention, retention, reproduction, reinforcement, and emotional responses shaping behavior. See Bandura's social learning theory and how vicarious experiences influence behavior via observation.

Symbolic learning uses language to mediate memory, reasoning, and problem solving, enabling interaction with non-present situations through words, images, and signs.

Modulatory variables, or structural variables, influence the conductive chain by altering vulnerability to imbalance, illustrated by the environmental and dispositional modulators in the vulnerability-stress model and bridge and rope analogies.

Identify dispositional variables, or personal variables, and explain trans situational consistency across biological or organismic and psychological or behavioral domains as modulating variables shaping behavior.

Identify how environmental modulatory variables—physical, social, and cultural factors—shape behavior across contexts. Link economic strain and labor policy to changes in activity and resources, such as salary reductions.

Identify and build protection factors and personal resources within functional analysis to prevent worsening, personalize treatment, and leverage pro-therapeutic strengths, as shown by a writer with strong family support.

Therapeutic objectives must be intelligible, avoid absolutes, be measurable and realistic, align with the client's demands, and use pre-test and post-test or Likert scales to track change.

Explore intervention techniques based on functional analysis to meet therapeutic objectives, emphasizing evidence-based, flexible, and consensual methods, with alternatives and manuals such as Vallejo or Moreno Perez.

Observe a role-play demonstration of a clinical interview used to perform functional analysis in a depression with binge eating case. See how an autobiographical questionnaire informs therapy.

The lecture walks through a step-by-step functional analysis, identifying three problem areas—strong anguish, low mood, and food traps—using autobiographical questionnaire data and detailing problem responses.

Identify modulators and environmental facilitators in functional analysis, distinguishing problem responses from modulators, and show how these factors shape mood and binge behavior under deprivation.

Develop the maintenance hypothesis by distinguishing conditioned and operative responses, mapping stimulus–response chains, and clarifying unconditional versus conditional stimuli.

Trace how consequences sustain operant responses and merge with classical conditioning chains, showing negative reinforcement maintains distress, avoidance, and binge eating via discriminative and conditional stimuli.

Relate modulating variables to functional chains to identify context-specific influences and construct an origin hypothesis, guiding objectives and interventions derived from functional analysis in psychotherapy.

Learn therapy objectives and intervention techniques for functional analysis, emphasizing patient agreements and adherence. Explore techniques like relaxation, hypnosis, cognitive restructuring, and acceptance and commitment therapy, plus sleep hygiene.

The lecture explains functional analysis of behavior to the patient, detailing how discriminative stimuli trigger binge episodes, relief, and avoidance, and emphasizes psychoeducation and rebuilding reinforcements.

Explore a functional analysis of jealousy in a case study, identify modulators and conditioned responses, and apply Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with exposure, cognitive diffusion, and values work.