Author: Erin O'donnell

Cognitive therapy involves the individual working collaboratively with the therapist to develop skills for testing and modifying beliefs, identifying distorted thinking, relating to others in different ways, and changing behaviors. Cognitive therapy is a type of therapy where the therapist will try to force the patient to adapt their thinking into a more positive way. Negative and unrealistic thoughts can cause patients distress and result in problems. When a person suffers with psychological distress, the way in which they interpret situations becomes skewed, which in turn has a negative impact on the actions they take. Many people suffering from depression often are extremely hard on themselves, and blame everything that goes wrong on themself. Therapists apply cognitive therapy when they see their patients view most events with a negative perspective, and personally decrease their self esteem. In our class, we mentioned  Aaron Beck, and how he trained his depressed patients to daily record positive events. After Beck had his patients record the positive events, he would ask the patients to list how they contributed to the positive action. This helps train the patient’s brain to think positively towards their own self.

After hearing Dr. Wede talk about cognitive therapy, and what it entails, I realized that it was the technique my therapist used to help treat me. Junior and senior year of highschool I was depressed, and thought very negatively towards myself and basically hated myself. When I began seeing a therapist for help, she diagnosed me with depression and anxiety, and began learning my behaviors to help treat me. About a month or two into my treatment, my therapist asked me to keep a journal, whether it be on my phone, or in a book for every time throughout the day where I was happy or something good happened to me. Then in our sessions, she would ask me to speculate why I was happy, and how I contributed to the action that caused me to feel happy. She also asked me what I was doing during those happy times, and encouraged me to increase those activities that made me happy. A specific example I remember telling my therapist was when I was driving with my three friends, singing our favorite song as loud as we could. I remember feeling so happy and grateful in that moment, and when my therapist asked me to identify how I contributed to the moment I said how I have a nice personality so I was able to acquire good friends that are similar to me and care for me. Through this therapy I was able to recover, and think positively towards myself without damaging my self esteem. 

 

Works Cited

“What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: CBT Info Los Angeles.” Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles, cogbtherapy.com/about-cbt.

Mcleod, Saul. “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.” Cognitive Behavioral Therapy | CBT | Simply Psychology, 1 Jan. 1970, www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-therapy.html.

Have you ever previously learned something in school that interfered with a lesson you are learning currently or learned something new that made you forget what you learned before? This is called proactive interference in psychology, and I have personally experienced this through exceptions to the rules in chemistry and math. 

Proactive interference is the form of interference where old memories restrain the capacity to remember new information. Proactive interference occurs when past memories hold back an individual from retaining new memories. Proactive interference is very common when learning something in school. Many times when taking a test a person will remember something they learned in a previous lesson, but they cannot simply remember the new material they learned in that specific lesson. This is an example of proactive interference. Another example would be if an individual is trying to learn a new language like spanish, and they speak french already; the french language that is already known might interfere with the comprehension of spanish because they can be similar. The competition between the two memories prevents the new material from encoding into the individual’s memory. Proactive interference causes past memories to block the encoding of new memories typically because the memories might correlate or be similar in some way.

Retroactive interference is the form of interference where new memories restrain the capacity to old information; thus, the new material being added into an individual’s memory will make the individual forget some of the old memories. Even though there is competition between the two memories and the new material will win, there is no unlearning involved in retroactive interference. Something that affects retroactive interference is sleep or rest. If a person learns something new than rests or sleeps afterwards there is less of a chance that any new information will be retained; therefore, minimizing the possibility of retroactive interference to happen. An example would be if a dancer learned a series of steps or moves, and then only can remember the last move that was taught. Because the dancer forgot the previously learned information and could only remember the most recent information taught, the dancer experienced retroactive interference. Another example would be if someone speaks spanish, but then moves to France. Then they end up spending so much time learning and speaking french they forget how to correctly speak spanish. The newly learned information trumps the previous memories causing retroactive interference to occur. 

In highschool I took Honors Chemistry and AP Chemistry, so coming to college I had a pretty decent background in chemistry. During my Chemistry 110B class we learned about how there are exceptions to the octet rule in Lewis Structures. While studying for my recent exam I could not remember to apply the exceptions to the octet rule because the old information was blocking the encoding of the new material. This is a representation of proactive interference because the old memories interfered with the comprehension of the new information. 

My schedule this year has my Chemistry 110B class right after my Math 140B class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. After both of my classes are done I try to review what I learned in both lessons that day. I was always confused at how I was able to forget what I learned in my math class in such a short amount of time; however, I realized that this is an example of retroactive interference. The new information I learned in chemistry interfered with my memory of the lesson I learned in math causing me to forget the math lesson because chemistry and math can overlap making retroactive interference stronger. 

 

Works Cited

Mcleod, Saul. “Proactive and Retroactive Interference.” Proactive and Retroactive Interference | Simply Psychology, 1 Jan. 1970, www.simplypsychology.org/proactive-and-retroactive-interference.html.

Shrestha, Praveen. “Proactive Interference.” Psychestudy, 16 June 2019, www.psychestudy.com/cognitive/memory/proactive-interference.

Shrestha, Praveen. “Proactive and Retroactive Interference.” Psychestudy, 16 June 2019, www.psychestudy.com/cognitive/memory/proactive-retroactive-interference.

Remember back when the ice cream man used to drive around, and play a song so all the children knew he was coming. Children, or at least I, would almost salivate at the sound of that song because I knew I would be eating ice cream in a few minutes. While this is not an accurate example of behaviorism, it helps one comprehend what behaviorism really is. Behaviorism is when external stimuli trigger mental events – the ice cream song triggers children to want ice cream. A more serious example would be how the sound of an explosion can trigger PTSD for soldiers or anyone who experienced war. Behaviorism is described as the scientific analysis of observable behaviors, and emphasizes the outward behavioral aspects of thought and dismissed the inward experiential aspects. 

It took my family about ten years to convince my mom to tolerate a dog, now she is so extremely attached to the dog, but that is besides the point. When we finally got a dog we had to potty train him quickly because he enjoyed going to the bathroom inside the house. Our dog trainer said it is common for owners to teach their dog to ring a bell attached to the door when the dog needs to go outside. We started to have my dog ring a bell with his nose every time he went outside to use the bathroom. Eventually, he figured out he has to ring the bell when he needs to go to the bathroom. We thought this was so fascinating and that our dog was so talented, until it began to backfire. He was still a young puppy, and would have some accidents in the house if we were gone for too long; however, most of his “accidents” were not accidents. We realized that whenever he heard a bell go off he thought that meant it was time to go to the bathroom, which was not true. Therefore, everytime a phone alarm went off, the oven timer beeped, or something sounded like a bell to him he would go to the door to be let out. Sometimes we would see him standing at the door and take him outside, but other times he would decide to go to the bathroom inside the house. Needless to say we abandoned the bell idea, and normally potty trained him after that.

In this example, my dog would hear the ring of a bell, an external stimuli, and it would trigger his bladder to need to be released. This is an example of behaviorism because an outside or physical event evoked an inward or mental event, which caused my dog to pee inside the house. This example happened to be one where we trained my dog to react a certain way when he heard a sound, but behaviorism can occur naturally or subconsciously without any training involved. 

Sources

Kevinbinz. “An Introduction To Behaviorism.” Fewer Lacunae, 7 July 2017, kevinbinz.com/2016/10/29/behaviorism/.

Graham, George. “Behaviorism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 19 Mar. 2019, plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/.