Cognitive-Affective Bases of Behavior
Part 2 tests this domain through behavior you can observe in a stem: why a behavior persists, what maintains it, what a client remembers, and which appraisal drives the emotion. Recognizing the mechanism behind the described behavior, then selecting the intervention that targets it, is the skill being measured.
Conditioning mechanics
- Classical conditioning: a neutral stimulus paired with an unconditioned stimulus acquires conditioned properties; extinction is new learning rather than erasure, so spontaneous recovery occurs.
- Conditioned taste aversion (Garcia) is acquired in one trial with long delays, violating standard contiguity rules.
- Operant consequences: positive reinforcement adds a stimulus and increases behavior; negative reinforcement removes one and increases behavior; punishment decreases behavior and does not teach an alternative.
- Schedules: variable ratio produces the highest, most extinction-resistant rates (gambling); fixed interval produces scalloped pauses with a burst before reinforcement.
- Shaping reinforces successive approximations; the Premack principle uses a high-frequency behavior to reinforce a low-frequency one.
Memory systems
- Working memory holds roughly four chunks; long-term memory divides into declarative (episodic, semantic) and nondeclarative (procedural, priming).
- Serial position: primacy reflects long-term storage, recency reflects working memory; a fast-paced list inflates recency.
- Encoding specificity and state-dependent retrieval mean recall is best when the context at retrieval matches encoding.
- Alzheimer's disease attacks episodic memory first; procedural skill learning may remain relatively intact.
Cognitive-affective mediators
- Beck's cognitive triad: negative views of self, world, and future.
- Learned helplessness and attributional style: internal, stable, and global attributions for negative events predict depression.
- Heuristics (availability, representativeness, anchoring) and confirmation bias explain judgment errors in clinicians as well as clients.
Worked example
A man with panic disorder checks his pulse repeatedly; each check briefly relieves anxiety, yet checking increases over time. Identify the contingency: the check terminates an aversive internal state, so checking is negatively reinforced, and the escape prevents him from learning that the sensations are harmless. Correct intervention targets the contingency, interoceptive exposure with response prevention, rather than relaxation alone, which would leave the avoidance loop intact.
Traps
- Calling the removal of a good thing punishment; negative reinforcement increases behavior.
- Assuming extinction erases the original learning.
- Mistaking a recency effect for strong long-term memory.
- Confusing reinforcement contingencies with cognitive distortions when the stem describes observable consequences.